


And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

by cyprith



Category: Fallout 3
Genre: F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 04:52:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 57,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyprith/pseuds/cyprith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charon shares a certain kinship with his new employer. She's been designed, he thinks. Built. Not unlike himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> And Wolves Beneath Their Seams now has an 8track playlist by ZFreelance. Give it a listen as you read! http://8tracks.com/zfreelance/v-s-war

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

* * *

She is not the first smoothskin in Underworld. Certainly not the strangest, or even especially beautiful. And Charon has seen mercs—he has seen legions come and go and die outside their doors—but this one…

He feels a certain kinship for her—recognizes something in her eyes.

Charon is not a man for words. Still. She is… fabricated, he thinks. She is not a woman entirely of her own design. Not unlike himself. Humanity hangs on her like ill-fitted sheepskin.

"Are you for hire?" she asks him.

"Talk to Ahzrukhal," he says.

And she does. She sits down at the bar like a lady from a lost world, loose-limbed and poised, heavy boots crossed neatly at the ankle. He hears snatches of their conversation—hears her pod and pry, the dull drone of Ahzrukhal's voice, pitched low, meant to hide beneath the radio.

At last, she says, "I want to speak to you about his contract."

And Ahzrukhal laughs. "Oh, would you now? He is a highly valuable asset to me and to the Ninth Circle—"

"He terrifies you." It is not what Ahzrukhal expects. He stops mid-word, twitches, once, hard—a bad tell for a gambler—and Charon wonders if Ahzrukhal will order him to intervene, to erase this slip as he has erased others.

Instead, his employer laughs again—or tries to—the canny salesman; charming, unafraid.

But Charon has hated this man for nearly fifteen years. He knows him. He can see his hands from here, white knuckled, clenched beneath the bar.

"Terrifies me? Madam, I assure you, I have nothing to fear. Charon is absolutely loyal to whomever holds his contract. Unfailing, unflinching, until the day that employment ends."

The woman smiles, inclines her head. "Then why spend so much time to reassure a stranger?"

"Reassured strangers buy more." Ahzrukhal grins, leans too close, shows too many teeth. She has unnerved him. "Are you sufficiently _reassured?_ I don't suffer squatters here, little girl."

Ahzrukhal's eyes flash to Charon, groping, over the distance. An unsubtle threat. Charon ignores him—he has not been ordered to do otherwise—fixing his attention to the other patrons in the bar.

But the woman sees. She turns a little on her stool, smiles at him over the distance.

"There is a point where your contract can't hold him, isn't there? A line in the sand between the two of you, but you don't know where," she says. Charon feels her gaze on him like an itch, like radiation.

And still, the woman smiles. She swivels again, to Ahzrukhal, and Charon has seen kinder snipers, quiet sun-lit scopes staring in the distance. "You don't sell unwavering loyalty to the first pretty merc who happens by."

Ill-fitting sheepskin, Charon thinks. And wolf beneath her seams.

"A lot of talk for someone so…" Ahzrukhal gazes around at the patrons with the air of a cheap magician, "out of her element. Am I correct in assuming you mean to offer me a deal?"

A bag of caps falls to the counter between them.

"Eight-hundred," she says.

"An insult, madam." But his eyes jump from the bag to Charon. "For two-thousand, _perhaps_ …"

The woman does not move. Billie Holiday swells in the silence between them.

Charon reminds himself not to hope.

"Eight-hundred," she says. "Today. And I never bring him here again."

Ahzrukhal swallows. His eyes dance—the bag, his corner—

The woman unties the pouch. A river of caps clatters free, spilling over the counter, over Ahzrukhal's anxious fingers, onto the floor.

Charon does not hope. He does not breathe.

Quietly, his contract changes hands.

From her seat at the bar, the woman cocks her head at Charon and smiles. "Do what you need to do."

" _What_?" Ahzrukhal spits, scrambles backwards. "Our deal—"

Charon is not a man for words. He shoulders his shotgun, squeezes the trigger—once, twice.

Billie Holiday stops singing. His new employer smiles. With the pad of her thumb, she wipes a drop of blood from her sleeve.

"Good enough?" she asks.

Charon gives her a sharp nod, holsters his weapons.

 _"Grab your hankies, children, cause I've got a heart-warming tale to tell,"_ Three-Dog croons from the radio. " _It's about a little girl's search for her… for her daddy."_

Deftly, the woman flicks the radio off. She rises to her feet, leaves her caps scattered on the floor between Ahzrukhal's battered leather shoes.

Smiling, she hooks an arm through his.

"Then let's go."


	2. Chapter Two

Part Two

* * *

Once outside, his employer removes her hand from his arm. Her shoulders drop. In Underworld, she had matched her stride to his. Here, her steps even, falling into something more familiar. When she smiles at him, the predator has gone from her face.

"I'm V," she tells him.

Charon does not respond, and she does not press. Instead, his employer jumps up to sit on the subway wall and unfolds his contract.

There have been others to read his contract, but not many. Not many of his employers have had the ability, and fewer still the inclination.

Charon stands by and waits for her to finish, his gun at the ready, scanning for stray threats. From the street, Willow catches his eye, lifts the remnant of an eyebrow in his direction.

" _Azhrukhal_?" she mouths over the distance.

Charon tilts his gun. Willow smiles. She salutes him; sharp and clean, boots together—old training of her own.

"What's this?" his employer asks.

Abruptly, Charon's attention returns to her. His employer holds his contract up to him, pointing to the bottom.

"My name."

His employer looks at his contract again. She traces the tight scrawl of his name, the symbols alien to her, her face inscrutable.

"If I asked where you grew up," she says at last, "would you answer me?"

Charon shifts his grip on his gun.

"You are entitled to my services in combat."

She nods, refolds his contract and stands.

"I didn't think so."

* * *

They travel. If there is a method to the madness of her path, Charon doesn't see it. Still, he collects what he can from observation.

His employer prefers close quarters—long halls, low ceilings. Given the choice, she takes subways over open ground, caves before storefronts. She carries little, though some of what she carries has no obvious value—a bobble head, a square of very clean metal, a broken 10mm.

The 10mm could be easily repaired. When he offers, his employer shakes her head, mouth tight. She stares through him, wolf beneath her seams. "It stays broken."

Yet, despite the neglected 10mm, his employer carries and maintains her weapons with confidence. She collects knives, keeps a sawed-off shotgun for emergencies, favors an assault carbine but hates the noise.

"I'd kill for a sniper rifle," she tells him, waiting on her belly at the edge of a crumbling subway platform. "You any good with those?"

"I am proficient."

She smiles. "You'll have to teach me."

Charon watches her squeeze three tight rounds into a raider's head and privately disagrees.

Still, despite her tangle of idiosyncrasies, they work well together. Her movements in battle are simple and precise. He predicts her path without difficulty. After an uneasy few first days, his employer comes to anticipate his as well. They fall into an easy pattern. Days pass with barely a handful of words between them. Much of what they need they communicate through nods and gestures.

His new employer requires little—accuracy, cover, simple melee strategy. No coups, no manipulations, no searching master plans. Threats to her wellbeing are extremely straightforward. If it draws a gun, Charon shoots it.

After fifteen years with Azhrukhal, traveling with this woman now, Charon feels not unlike what Willow would call a tourist.

Unlike the vast majority of his employers, this one does not treat him as a weapon.

"Do you drink?" she asks him in Grayditch, two beers in her hand and the severed head of an ant smoldering at her feet.

Charon shrugs. His employer grins. "Good. Here, I hate drinking alone."

They sit together on an old green couch, half-collapsed into the floor. His employer kicks off her boots, curls up on the fallen end, bare toes tucked between the cushions. Charon sits opposite, a comfortable distance between them, shotgun at his side and his feet propped on the coffee table.

She finds a package of Spring Valley chips somewhere in her bag, mostly unbroken. They pass the package between them.

Halfway through his beer, the domesticity of the scene strikes him—and he has not… he has not ever shared a beer with an employer. Certainly, he has not ever sat at his employer's side, sharing junk food and charred bits of ant.

It unnerves him.

Beside him, V wedges the empty, crumpled up bag of chips between the couch cushions. She finds a box of snack cakes, offers him one.

It unnerves him, but Charon finds he does not hate it.

* * *

When they come upon a den of yao-guai late in the day, sunlight stretching long arms over the waste behind them, Charon shoulders his shotgun. But V shakes her head, pulls his barrel down.

"They won't hurt us," she says.

Charon tilts his head, asking a question with the line of his body. V shrugs.

"My father's one of those mad scientist types. He… modified me as an embryo. I don't smell human to them." She shrugs again, her smile tight and bitter. "Maybe I'm not. Stay here."

Charon does as she asks. He does not holster his weapon, however. He has had other employers—lunatics—who believed themselves immune to bullets or radiation. Perhaps this is the first symptom of the same.

But the yao-guai at the entrance of the cave only snuffles as V approaches. It smells her outstretched hand without obvious interest and settles in the dust, its heavy head laid across its paws.

V smiles. She scratches its chin. When the creature doesn't stir, she scratches further back, massaging the swollen scent glands along its jaw. Oil fills her palm. The yao-guai grumbles, but makes no further protest. V smears the oil over the chest-plate of her salvaged Talon armor and fills her palm again. She crosses back to him, leaves three streaks glistening down his stomach—reads something in his battered face and laughs.

"Right. No touching," she says. Smiling, she shrugs. "Sorry. Have to smell like a monster to sleep with monsters."

He had not… he had only watched her. And yet the woman carried a conversation through his silence, easy as shooting bottles. Charon does not know what to make of her. He does not know what to say.

But V expects nothing from him. She returns to the yao-guai. And watching his employer fondly scratch the beast behind its scabby ears, without meaning to, Charon wonders what she sees when she looks at him.

Later, he wonders at his willingness to follow her into the cave, into a den of monsters with his weapon holstered and only three oily streaks for protection. But nevertheless, he follows her, and the beasts barely notice their passing.

They make their camp on a high ledge of the cave, away from the creatures, but with room enough for two and their packs between them.

"No watches tonight," she says. "We'll be safe."

Charon nods, prods a little fire into life with wood they scavenged from an old table further down.

"And by that I mean, _go to sleep tonight,_ Charon. I'm pretty sure you're pushing 48 hours."

Again, she surprises him. She watches him, he realizes. Enough to know he does not sleep. Charon almost smiles.

"As you command."

He sleeps that night, as he has been ordered. But when he wakes, well into the night and with the scrap of fire burnt down to cinders, he finds his employer huddled in her bedroll, the light of her Pip-Boy sneaking through the seams. She holds his contract, her fingers tracing again and again the shape of his name.

Memorizing it, he thinks, and Charon cannot fathom why.


	3. Chapter Three

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part Three

* * *

Late in an evening, they stop to make camp in the remains of an old gas station. As usual, Charon circles the area, clearing the perimeter. When he returns around the front of the building, he finds his employer beneath the towering red rocket, dismantling a motorcycle.

"All clear," he says and takes a defensive position at the chain-link fence to wait for further instruction.

No further instruction comes. Instead, V peers up at him around the flattened rim of one tire, grease smeared down her cheek like war paint. "Can I ask how old you are?"

It is not a question he cares to dwell on. Indeed, it is not a question he is certain he knows the answer to.

"You are entitled to my services in combat."

V shrugs. "Fair enough."

For awhile, they are quiet. She crouches at the back end of the machine. Charon surveys the area, scanning for possible threats. He hears the sound of metal on metal. Not long after, a tire falls off.

"I would love to fix one of these," she says. "Make supply runs a hell of a lot easier. Can I ask if you know anything about these?"

"Diesel engine," he tells her. "Nuclear turbine."

When he glances down, he finds V grinning up at him over the seat, her eyes bright. "Yeah?"

"It explodes when shot."

His employer hums. "Fair enough," she says and stands, wiping greasy hands down the back of her legs. "No riding flaming deathtraps into the sunset for us then, I guess."

Despite himself, Charon snorts. V beams.

"Was that an actual smile? Good god, the world is ending all over again," she says and laughs, nudging him in the shoulder as she heads past, across the courtyard and into the gas station. "Come on, let's go eat. I'm starving."

Charon holsters his shotgun—he has cleared the building already—and follows. His arm tingles where V bumped him. Fatigue, he thinks, and rolls his shoulder, trying to work out the knot.

Inside, they fall into routine, scouring the shelves together. V combs through crates and climbs under the counter. Charon pulls everything down from the high shelves she could not otherwise reach. He finds a number of intact cans, mostly beans. V emerges from the wreckage of a freezer with a tin of mixed fruit.

"Wasteland gourmet," she tells him, grinning.

And halfway to setting a can of cram where his employer can reach it, watching her smile and duck beneath the counter again, it strikes Charon that he is… not unhappy.

It is an odd realization. Odder still as his happiness or lack thereof has no bearing on the terms between them. Yet, the realization remains.

Charon is not unhappy.

V puts her foot through an old packing crate and stacks the slats of half-rotted wood in an old metal box.

"They're moldy, but I'm hoping the fumes won't kill us. Are you okay taking the risk?" She looks up, and seeing his face, V stops. "What's up?"

She is entitled to his services in combat. Happiness is irrelevant—a distraction already too-long entertained. Charon shakes his head, drops his can on the counter.

"Heard something," he says, not quite a lie. "I will return shortly."

Outside, he makes three rounds before the itching beneath his skin subsides. Still, Charon regrets the lack of anything to shoot and checks the perimeter twice more before returning.

He finds V seated before the fire, Cram sizzling on her clean sheet of scrap metal. Two cans of beans sit wedged in the quiet edges of the fire, labels black and contents simmering.

"I thought we'd split the fruit," she says.

Charon nods, sits at her right hand, close enough if needed. "If you wish."

* * *

In the morning, his employer is… strange. A flurry of frantic energy, she pulls every shelf away from the walls inside—escapes outside after a quarter hour, only to take the gas can from the motorcycle, set it down, pick it up again.

When she notices him watching her, V shrugs. "That and some lawnmower blades, I can make a flaming sword."

 _Useless,_ Charon does not say. Still, V shakes her head and laughs.

"Yeah, I know. If I wanted to get that close to a raider, I'd just kiss Jericho. Safer." She shrugs again. "Probably still get shanked though."

Something is wrong. Charon watches his employer, trying to read her face, but her face changes too quickly to follow. She abandons their gestures in favor of useless chatter. Her hands scramble and jump like an old addict.

"Are you ready?" she asks him. Charon nods. Of course he is ready; it is his function.

V sucks in a deep breath, looking north. "Okay. Let's go."

Something is wrong—the knowledge dogs him—but there is nothing he can do. Charon falls into place at her heel, shotgun ready, glowering at dirt.

They walk.

* * *

As they come upon an old garage, V's manic energy dissipates abruptly. Her stride lengthens. Her shoulders square. Her hands still, steady on the stock of her gun. She moves with intent, with wolf in her eyes. Inside, his employer dispatches two molerats, Charon a third.

Through a hydraulic trap-door, they descend into the basement. Here, an enormous bunker door dominates the wall. The flaking paint reads Vault 112. V works the control panel without hesitation.

She does not look at him.

When the heavy door rolls away, a rush of bitter, stagnant air presses out to meet them. Dust kicks up with every step they take, but footprints mark the floor already—recent, only slightly smaller than his own. Male, Charon thinks, gauging the stride. Alone.

They follow the trail. V walks with her head down, eyes dark, knuckles white on the butt of her carbine. She engages another door. Behind it, a robobrain lights and rotates from an open control panel.

Immediately, they flatten backwards around the corner, one on either side of the door.

Charon looks to V for a sign. She shakes her head— _wait_.

The robobrain trundles forward. "Welcome to Vault 112, Resident. According to sensors you have arrived 202.3 years behind schedule," it announces at it crests the doorframe. "Please re-dress in your Vault-Tec issued Vault suit before proceeding. If you have misplaced your suit, I am authorized to distribute a new one."

Charon looks to his employer again. Still, V signs him back. Cautiously, she accepts the suit from the robot, listens as it proceeds through its script.

She has expected this. Planned for it. They did not happen upon this place by accident.

Finally, when the robot falls silent and creaks away to rejoin whatever task occupied it for the last two-hundred years, V looks at him. She reads his face. Her eyes dart away, down, to the gun in her hands.

"I found a tape my father left," she says, stashing her weapon away. "He came here. Last anyone's heard of him."

"I don't like the look of this place," Charon tells her. For what it's worth. He recognizes determination in the heavy set of her mouth.

"I know." She grimaces, drops her pack in the dust and starts to strip, strapping shed armor into and onto her bag. "Just—I have to. I'm sorry. I have to."

Charon nods. He positions himself in the doorway, guards her back until she takes up her kit again. Together, they continue.

In the belly of the vault, they find a circle of simulation pods arranged around a massive central computer and Charon cannot breathe. He cannot breathe. The base of his skull itches viciously—old probe-wounds long since healed. His fingers burn. He smells sulfur, cordite. Faint, two-hundred years away, he hears gunfire—

Hears Brahms' Variations on a Theme—

Hears the Head laughing—

And gunfire, gunfire—

V notices. She stops. "Have you been here before?" she asks.

"No."

Charon forces his hands to unclench, his spine to relax. He finds his gun in his hands and doesn't remember putting it there. Not good, he thinks, holsters it.

Above, the robobrain adjusts something in the wiring with tiny, precise clicks. Tweezers. Shrapnel. Charon clenches his jaw until the muscles creak.

V drops her bag. Gently, quiet as a breath, she touches her fingertips to his arms. Her breathing slows, deliberate and even. She gives him no commands, only stands, her eyes on his, waiting.

Slowly, Charon matches his breathing to hers. His jaw eases. His hands relax.

"I have to go in there," she says when he is mostly calm again. "Any words of wisdom?"

"Don't die."

V laughs, grim. "Good words." And then, "Here." She disengages her Pip-boy. Charon eyes the entry points it leaves open, raw caverns into her nervous system. Still, when she offers, he accepts.

"For the radio. And the clock. I figure three hours. After that, see if you can bust me out. If you can't…" She shrugs, eyeing the pods. Idly, she scratches the long-scarred fringe of an access port, but he can read fear in the line of her shoulders. "You know where I keep your contract. Wish me luck."

Charon swallows.

"There will be an override switch within the simulation," he says instead. "A code activated by a series of actions in a location non-vital to the operating program."

V blinks. Charon turns the Pip-boy over in his hands, staring fixedly at the screen. He has shared more than he is comfortable revealing, but despite himself, despite the morning's unfamiliar mania, he trusts this woman. V asks for boundaries, never answers.

As he expects, his employer does not pry. Instead, she steps forward, flattens her hand on his bare forearm and catches his eyes.

"Thank you," she says, and this he does not expect.

Charon can count on one hand the number of employers who have thanked him.

He does not know what his expression reads—he doubts it reads at all—but his employer smiles, pats his arm and hoists herself into the nearest pod.

She does not say goodbye. Charon chooses to view this as a hopeful sign.


	4. Chapter Four

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part Four

* * *

He paces. He waits. Charon manages the first twenty minutes within the circle of pods before he escapes outside. The air doesn't smell much better here—diesel and dead molerat—but it doesn't smell of memory. He resumes his restless vigil here, his back to the outer wall, sunlight climbing his legs.

His employer is in a simulation pod, entering into a combat situation in which he cannot follow.

He may hold his own contract by nightfall.

Charon does laps around the building—running, burning useless energy—but he cannot outpace himself. He returns to the vault within the hour, stinking of dust and sweat, and presses his heated back against the shell of his employer's pod.

Waiting.

In the silence, Three-Dog chatters on. The same twenty songs cycle and cycle again. Though it is a risk in an unsecure location, Charon puts the volume as high as he can—anything to drown out Brahms, the vestigial twitches of an old routine, old programming.

One hour and seventeen minutes later, his employer's pod hisses open. As soon as the sensory appendages disengage, Charon hoists her up and out and sets her back on her feet again, close at his side. She laughs—he knew she would laugh—but it catches in her throat like smoke and her hand stays on his forearm.

Sensory appendages disengage from every pod but two. Of those, only one opens.

Quietly, Charon unstraps his shotgun.

"That's my father," V says and for the first time, Charon realizes just how young she is. "The others didn't make it out."

Charon nods, but does not return his shotgun to its place.

He had expected, with her out of the pod, that their routine would resume. He had expected the danger would be past, that his employer would retake her position at the head of their team and _lead_.

But V does not remove her hand. She does not pull away from him. Charon feels her heat at his side like a weight, like a warm gun, but no ammo.

Quietly, he returns her Pip-boy, feels somewhat better when he hears it suction home again.

And then her father steps down from the pod, shaking only slightly. He makes his way around the equipment to meet her, leaning against the glass for support—and Charon knows him. One of the latest smoothskins to Underworld; empty promises from Rivet City, prying questions, quiet conversations in the Chop Shop that left even Barrows unnerved.

"Honey, what are you doing here?" the man asks. His gaze falls to Charon, hardens. "And… I see you've made a friend."

V's fingers spasm on his arm. Her face does not change. "This is Charon. Charon, James."

"We've met. And not on the best of terms." The man—her father—frowns. He watches Charon as he speaks, "Veronica, why didn't you stay in the vault?"

"Because Almodovar tried to kill me." Her eyes narrow. Still, she does not release his arm. "You've met Charon?"

"He escorted me from Underworld," he says and Charon does not trust him—did not trust him before Azhrukhal ordered him thrown out, and trusts him less now.

V glances back at him. Their gestures here are familiar— _unsafe,_ he tells her,conveyed in the line of his shoulders, in fingers curled and waiting. V's face hardens. "What did you do?"

"Asked too many questions." Her father shakes his head. His eyes move between the two of them—to his employer's gun, to Charon's, to his daughter's stone-faced stare. "Veronica, how well do you know this man? Please tell me you're not working for Azhrukhal, too."

"I bought Charon's contract." She clenches her jaw. Charon feels a low fury in her stance, feels the sheepskin slip and the wolf lift its head. "Azhrukhal is dead. And what about you? _Braun_?"

"I had hoped you would be safe—"

"Fuck the vault, Dad. What is _this_?"

"Finding the location of a GECK. Possibly the last remaining GECK."

"Project Purity." Her voice is hard.

"Yes. I never kept it a secret from you."

"No. No, I always knew which kid you loved best. So, what, then? Did you leave me behind as a distraction? You built me to live in the wastes, for this—"

"I tweaked a few genes, Veronica. We've been over this. I did not _build_ you; you are my daughter." For a moment he frowns, almost scolding—almost angry. But then his voice sinks, low, wheedling. Charon sees a dog, belly-up and begging. "But I have to get back to Rivet City. You know how important this is."

When V speaks, her voice is hollow. "And everything is going according to plan." She nods. "I get it. A little slow, but then mom wasn't a genius, was she? You just liked her DNA."

Her father shakes his head.

"We can talk about this on the way," he says, starting for the stairs. V follows. Charon matches her stride—a little closer, perhaps, but his bones ache, his skin burns—anything to get above again.

"I'm not going to Rivet City," she says when they've reached the open air. "Other engagements."

Her father pauses, but only for a moment. "It would have been nice to work with you," he says, "I hope you change your mind."

And then he's off, loping over the wastes with a familiar ground-eating stride, tapping at his Pip-boy display. V does not watch him go. She swings south instead, following their footprints from the morning.

* * *

"Are you okay?" she asks him when they are half a mile from the vault.

Charon pauses in his relentless scan of the wastes. It takes a moment for the question to process. He did not enter a simulation pod. His safety was never in question. He is obviously uninjured.

It registers that it is perhaps his _comfort_ that has concerned her.

His comfort is inconsequential. There are no provisions in his contract for _comfort_. Yet, when he does not answer, V stops, dust licking at her boots. She looks at him and waits.

At last, Charon nods. V sighs. Head down, she picks up their trail again.

"I'm sorry I took you in there," she says. "I'm sorry _I_ went in there. I should have left him rot."

Charon remains silent. His employer glances back at him, searching his face, but either finds nothing, or finds nothing she likes. Charon is built for fire and war; he wonders just what kind of comfort she'd been searching for.

He wonders why she didn't tell him about the vault.

* * *

They return to the gas station in silence. As before, V clambers into the dumpster in search of suitable salvage—wood for a fire, something extra to barricade the door. Charon clears the perimeter. This time, when he circles around the back of the building, he hears metal rending around the front.

Adrenaline sears through him, sinks teeth into his chest, and Charon tears off around the corner, already sighting down the barrel—

V brings a heavy bar of metal down on the motorcycle. The headlight snaps free, rolls away like a lost eye. She stomps it, grinding glass beneath her boots, takes out the front tire rim with a homerun swing.

Charon lowers his gun. He breathes through his nose, even, slow, but his hands still twitch.

He had thought—

He had _feared_.

Charon stands at the corner of the gas station shack and watches as V causally disassembles the motorcycle with heavy blows. She breaks the bike in half—shatters the rebar she'd been using as a club and picks up the wreckage by the handlebars instead.

She is stronger than she should be, compacting the back of a rusted out Oldsmobile with a boulder of broken metal. How many tweaks arranged that, he wonders? Which few genes rebuilt her?

Charon holsters his weapon. He crosses the distance between them, returns to his place by her side.

"Mistress."

V drops the bike. She stares at it, sunken into the Oldsmobile's battered trunk.

"I'm sorry," she says.

Charon has known his employer for sixty-seven days. The look on her face, the set of her body—he has not seen either from her before today.

She is different. Unexpectedly, too many things have changed. Standing before the wreckage here is a different woman. Charon does not know what she requires of him. He does not know how to anticipate her needs.

She had suggested he take his own contract—suggested that it may be _necessary_ for him to take his own contract—and the idea still sits rotten in his stomach.

He does not—

He _cannot_ —

Charon sets his jaw. His purpose is to protect his employer. He will do so. There is no other option.

"I will start the fire," he says.

Slowly, V's shoulders ease. Her breathing evens, quiet again. "Yeah," she says. "Okay."

They do not speak again that night.


	5. Chapter Five

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 5

* * *

They do not speak again for several days. Subtly, the world shifts.

His employer avoids close quarters now, climbs hills for high ground and walks the edges of open fields. She carries more. Little things, but many. Leg braces hang from her pack like pelts. Surgical tubing coils in her pockets. V stuffs bandages in buffout bottles to stop the rattle, stashes stimpaks in every pocket.

* * *

Twice, at night, he catches her bent over his contract.

"If I ask you what this says—" she starts, the second time.

"It is my name," he tells her, temper short. He is sunburnt along his neck, his leather armor sweat-stuck to his skin.

She must read it in his voice or in his face; she hands him a bottle of water and a stimpak from her pocket.

"I'm sorry," she says, the third time since the vault.

Charon applies the stimpack and turns away.

* * *

He watches her. She sleeps uneasy, her carbine always at hand.

Charon does not sleep at all.

* * *

They walk, heading north. V's face burns and peels and burns again, but still they remain above ground—no caves, no subways or disused sewer tunnels. They walk in heavy sun, baked and blistering. Occasionally, they trudge through the night as well.

Regardless, they walk.

For days, they slog along with nothing more interesting than rocks and dirt and few words between them. Until, at last—at long last—V creeps to the top of a tall hill and stops, staring down at the badly damaged house below. She grimaces, fingers curled. _Raiders_.

Charon nods, grateful for the respite. Here, at least, he is certain his requirements have not changed. He will engage at medium range; V will remain on the hill, pick off any who come too close or maintain steady aim. This Charon knows, the pattern between them worn worry-stone smooth and easy with use.

Silently, he swings his shotgun down, nestles it into his shoulder and sidles downhill. But before he can stray far, V's fingers catch in his sleeve. She shakes her head, points back the way they've come.

Charon stares at her. He thinks he has misunderstood.

 _Four,_ he signs back. _Quick._ And pointing at one raider, staggering past the crooked mailbox, _Careless._

They have fought far worse odds before and come out uninjured in the end. Certainly, they can eradicate four raiders, unaware, unprepared, unsteady on chems and home-brewed liquor.

But V shakes her head. Jaw set, she points down the hill. Charon returns to her side. The world tilts a little farther beneath his feet.

They retrace their steps, back the way they came.

And walk.

* * *

Not long after the raiders, they head east. The heat grows unbearable. Stagnant water spoils in the air, stifling humidity that makes every dragging footfall a chore. But here, at least, they can follow the river for what small relief it offers, roam where they can for shade.

V spends as much time as she can stand in the river, chewing rad-x, attempting to soothe her sunburnt skin. Charon keeps guard farther up the bank, shotgun balanced on his knees.

He wonders, though, should a mirelurk happen by, if his employer will allow him to shoot.

Still, Charon keeps watch. He watches her as well, scanning the water around her for potential threats. One night, propped on her elbows with her legs in the water, he sees her sketch the letters of his name into the riverbank. She smudges them out again soon after, rubs the mud down her arms to cover her burns.

Charon does not understand her fascination—does not share the inclination, has never caught himself scrawling _Veronica_ in the dirt. But still, at night, when she thinks him asleep or doesn't care to know otherwise, she reads his contract. Charon watches, eyes heavy in the dark, and he can feel her fingers trace his name.

* * *

At last—a mutual, silent decision after weeks of walking—they leave their packs beneath the Arefu overpass. After a quick sweep of the river for mirelurks, they wade in together. V strips down to basics, sinks low and stays under. Charon shucks what armor he can bare to part with, pulls off the thread-bare undershirt beneath and tosses it behind him, too, somewhere onto shore.

He dives, feeling certain there is only slightly more water in the river than in the air around them.

When he surfaces, V floats near enough to shore to grab a weapon should she need to. He catches the look on her face—watching him—and frowns.

"Your back," she says in answer. "You had a tattoo."

Charon purses his lips, thinking of her restless fingers on his name, the itch beneath his skin. He feels naked without his gun. Still, he nods. "Yes."

When he surfaces again, she tilts her head. "A dog?"

"A wolf." This, she does not question. She is from a vault—no doubt their history books have pictures.

She says instead, "there's writing."

"Yes."

"Can I ask you what it says?"

Despite himself, Charon considers it. Ninety-four days with this new employer, and Charon considers it. But she has changed, and his past is his own—well behind him, as it should be. He wants it buried in the ashes where he left it.

"You are entitled to my services in combat," he tells her. V purses her lips. She turns away, squinting down river, and does not speak again.

* * *

That night they stay in Arefu, in the old West residence, faint spots of blood still staining the floorboards. There is only one bed, though marks remain on the floor where a set of bunks once sat. Charon regards the cramped quarters, skin roiling and an itch down in his bones. One bed, no room to walk, barely room enough to stand upright.

"No watches tonight," V says. Dropping her bag by the door, she strips out of her armor with speed of heat and practice. "Alan and Brianna have it covered."

Charon clenches his jaw. Though he hates to be without it, he sets to peeling his armor off as well. He feels V's eyes on his back throughout. The muscles of his neck clench in vicious knots. Despite the heat, this time he leaves his undershirt in place.

They eat in silence, hunched over their food, ignoring each other as best they can. V fiddles with the radio, though he knows she hates the noise. Eventually, she gives up, turns it off again. Charon feels her face him and pulls a cloth out of his bag, begins to disassemble his shotgun at the table for something to do with his hands.

Slowly, approaching him with the same steps she gave her scabbed, decrepit yao-guai, V sits down on the edge of the bed.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

Charon turns the barrel over in his hands. "Do you require something of me?"

"The line in the sand," V says, very quiet. "Did I cross it?"

Charon stops. Despite the heat, he feels cold claws in his gut. "You are not Azhrukhal."

But V insists. "We're different. You and I. We're not… not right. Not like we were."

He does not want to have this conversation.

He wants to shoot something.

Behind him, V shifts on the bed, a chorus of squeaking springs announcing every twitch. Charon does not look back. He concentrates on field-stripping his gun, cleaning each piece as he sets it aside. For some time, she is silent.

And then, "What happened in the vault?"

Charon's hand clenches hard around the disassembled stock.

What happened in the vault?

Suddenly, with sharp-toothed clarity, Charon sees why they have remained above ground.

V will not risk taking him into a confined space. Not after his lapse, his _weakness._ Should he break, should he lose control, she will not be trapped with him.

She has changed—for fear of _him_.

Charon swallows, jaw clenched, burning with shame. "It will not happen again."

He hears V shake her head, hears the bedsprings creak again. "You were shaking, Charon. I've never seen you look like that. You weren't there. You were _gone_ —"

"It will not happen again," he repeats, fitting pieces together with more force than necessary, staring only at his hands.

"Well, then how do I fix this?" she says, leaning forward, towards him but not yet touching. "I don't want to cross your line—"

Charon flattens his hands on the table, loud and final.

" _You are not Azhrukhal,_ " he snarls, and it is the closest he has ever come to shouting at an employer.

V does not move, does not flinch. She has slept with monsters—he is just one more, and she is far from cowed.

"Look," she says. "I'm not asking what happened to you. If you want to talk about it, you know I'll listen, but I am _not asking_. The thing in the vault wasn't good, Charon. You haven't slept in at least eight days. Probably more. Whatever happened—whatever triggered you—I don't want it happen again."

For a moment, Charon thinks he would prefer his fucking corner in Ninth Circle to this interrogation.

"It will not," he says through gritted teeth.

"Then I have to know what to look out for. Don't I?"

For a long moment, Charon says nothing. He wants their easy rapport back again. He wants, he realizes, his employer to trust him. But she cannot, now, can she? The sight of those pods—a goddamned _memory_ —and he ruined everything.

"I'm not afraid of you," V says, very quietly, to his back. "I just want you to be okay."

It takes a moment for her words to sink in. Charon must repeat them to himself over in his head, turn the sentence over and scrutinize it from a dozen different angles.

She is not… she is not afraid of him. Rather, his employer fears… _for_ him. She has not followed the paths she prefers, has not allowed him to engage targets, all for her strange preoccupation with his _comfort_.

"A large portion of my training took place in simulation pods," he tells her, his voice low and hard, directed at the barrel of his gun. "I do not wish to revisit it."

Behind him, he hears V swallow. The springs protest. Finally, her hand finds his shoulder. And Charon does not—he has not _ever_ allowed his previous employers to touch him, but when her skin finds his, Charon knows he has been waiting for this for days.

Without meaning to, he relaxes. Tension flows from him like a broken dam, leaves his muscles watery, vibrating with vague electricity.

The touch lasts little more than a few seconds. V understands him, he thinks. She knows what he can tolerate.

She rises from the bed, crosses the room and pulls two beers from an old refrigerator—barely more than lukewarm, but drinkable. She pops both caps with the heel of her hand, sets one down at his elbow and returns to the bed.

They drink in silence, but it is a better silence.

* * *

"Do you want to sleep on the roof?" she asks—three beers later—and Charon thinks she might be more than buzzed. "Between the two of us, I bet we can get the mattress up there."

He considers it—looks between the mattress and his own tidy line of bottles, and thinks he might be somewhere south of sober himself.

Still.

"Need a rope," he tells her.

V grins.


	6. Chapter Six

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 6

* * *

Charon wakes with a headache and a mouthful of V's hair, half sprawled off the edge of the mattress, lying on a roof overlooking the river.

Oddly enough, it is the most pleasant morning he has had in some time. Years even, he thinks, chasing a stray hair from his mouth with the tip of his tongue.

Nearby, two bottles of purified water lay on their sides, in serious danger of rolling away. V brought them up the night before, he remembers. Something about least possible quantities of regret in the face of an ill-advised whiskey. Charon saves them both. He drops one in the crook of V's sleeping arm as he passes, swings his legs over the edge of the roof and sits, drinking his water, watching the river flow by.

He has not been given orders otherwise.

* * *

Following the river south and east, they find an ill-hidden foot trail—a clear line of boot prints to the water and back.

V cranes her neck to follow it, chewing another handful of Rad-X, and though he waits with gun ready, scanning their surroundings, Charon cannot help glancing at his employer.

She stands to her knees in the river, idly rubbing mud down the back of her neck. There are better ways to ease a sunburn—the fistfuls of Stimpaks in her pack comes to mind—but while she collects them with a vehemence, while she fills _his_ pockets every chance she gets, Charon realizes he has never seen her use one.

He wonders if she saves them for him. A peace offering, perhaps. Or genuine concern.

He is not sure which idea unsettles him more.

Quietly, V joins him on the riverbank, a careful distance between them. "Might be raiders. I think the trail heads up to those houses."

Charon shrugs. Peace offering or concern—either crawls like ants beneath his skin.

"I follow you," he says, eyes fixed on the horizon.

He feels V's eyes on his face—he feels her fingers coaxing the frayed edges of his name—and rolls his shoulders to work away the burn.

But V does not press. She does not speak. Instead, she smiles at him, and looking at her, Charon thinks he sees something like gratitude in her gaze.

He follows her.

* * *

They find a bridge and a barely-grown man at the opposite end, his armor patchwork, hands badly positioned on his gun.

"Hey! Who are you?" he demands, the barrel wavering between them both.

Before Charon can lift his shotgun, V slaps a hand down on the barrel, pointing it into the dirt. Yet, when he looks at her for a signal, he finds his employer scrutinizing the sentry, every line in her body bent towards him.

"How old are you?" she barks. It is not the question Charon expected.

The gun wavers. "That's not important—"

"Sixteen?" she demands. "Seventeen? Jesus, when was the last time you _ate_? You look awful."

"Um, yesterday, I guess?" the boy says. When V drops her pack and begins to rifle through, his eyes widen. He points his gun at her, but Charon levels his shotgun over V's bent shoulder, and abruptly the boy's rifle barrel points at dust.

"Look, you—you just stop there, okay," he tries and stands, taking a tentative step backwards. "We don't have anything to steal and we don't want any trouble."

V emerges from her pack with a box of InstaMash. Before the boy can protest again, she crosses the bridge and presses it into his hands. Behind him, from the houses, other faces peer around doorframes and barricades.

After two-hundred years, Charon is not a good judge of age. But he is certain they are all younger than his employer, by several years at least.

"Who's in charge here?" V asks and the boy blinks, staring at his hands, at the food—

At this sudden stranger watching him in genuine concern.

"Well, Red," he says. "But the super mutants came again last night—carried her and Shorty off. Now nobody's in charge. We're just… waiting. Next slaver run down from Paradise Falls, we'll all be goners."

V's face darkens. Charon recognizes the look—has seen it before, fixed on Azhrukhal across the bar. A grim determination, bitter understanding.

"Like hell," V says. "Carried her off where?"

The boy blinks at her. "Uh, well. North, I guess. To the police station?"

V nods, once. She reaches out, squeezes the kid's shoulder.

"I'll be back," she tells him, and in her voice Charon hears an echo—" _Do what you need to do."_

His employer walks to the end of the bridge, tapping the screen of her Pip-boy. When they are out of earshot, she says, "Charon, I need you to stay here—guard the entrance, shoot anything that looks at this place funny."

It is better than hiding from raiders, but not by much. Charon shakes his head. "My place is at your side."

"I'll be gone an hour tops. I have a cache nearby—a mile, maybe? Mines, grenades. I can make it there and back without you."

"Paradise falls is four miles north, north-west," Charon insists. He can see the screen of her Pip-boy, the dotted line of her projected path. "If you run into trouble—"

"I've run into trouble before. I'll be careful." V looks up at him, boots planted, eyes pleading. "They're just kids, Charon."

Just kids.

Charon wonders what that makes her.

Still, he steps back, takes his position at the end of the bridge, shotgun ready in his hands. "As you command."

Immediately, V's shoulders ease. Her fingers find his arm—like feathers, there and gone again.

"Thank you," she whispers, smiles, and slips a messy handful of Stimpaks from her pocket to his. She's gone before he can protest, loping off with gun drawn, sunset lingering along her jaw.

Charon watches her go, fingers tight on the stock of his gun.

He wants to call after her, but he does not know what to say.

* * *

Forty-five minutes exactly and V returns with two sacks full of ordinance—mines, grenades, small arms and their ammunition. She lays the mines down in the street, covers them with casual detritus—floating scraps of weather-beaten paper, cans, a lost street-sign. When she finishes, she returns to his side, hands him a packet of shotgun shells.

"You shoot anything?" she asks.

Charon shrugs. "Super mutant."

He does not tell her that he saw its hulking form in the far-off distance and left his post to see its head roll in a ditch. In any case, his employer does not ask.

V grins at him, bright-eyed and pleased. "You are a force of nature," she tells him.

And despite himself—though it was only one hostile, hardly strenuous and bending orders to engage—Charon feels a small, unsteady bubble of pride.

* * *

He follows V into the dusty courtyard, stands well back with an eye trained on the road as she arms a town of no one she knows and teaches them all to shoot.

She is not Azhrukhal. The suggestion—the fear itself—is an insult.

From the corner of his eye, Charon watches V correct a young woman's stance. She shows her how to sight down the barrel, how to hold her body against the recoil.

No, she is not Azhrukhal.

She is far from even close.


	7. Chapter Seven

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 7

* * *

Late that night, with the town armed and waiting, V leads him through the minefield and over the hill opposite. Backs low and slipping through shadow, they find the police station. An old barricade blocks in the station's front entrance. Charon hears movement from inside, waits for V to read the numbers from her Pip-boy.

 _Two_ , she signs and points. _One at either end._

Charon mimes, _grenade_.

V grins. She empties her pockets—hands him five. Together, they bomb the police courtyard, send the super mutants bellowing and bleeding through the bottleneck, pick them off easily—one, two.

They wait, but nothing else emerges from inside. Quietly, they slip through the bottleneck themselves and through the doors of the station.

Inside, V glances down at her Pip-boy and pales.

 _How many_? Charon signs.

But V can only shake her head. _Too many._

* * *

When a super mutant lunges unexpectedly around a corner, hefts a heavy rebar and sends V sailing into the wall, Charon feels no fear; only cold logic.

V's requires little of him. Accuracy, cover, simple melee strategy.

He blocks her fallen form with his body—fires, fires, fires until he paints the wall with the monster's brain and fires again to be sure. When he turns, he finds V already stirring, struggling to stand, blood matting her hair. In a second, Charon is at her side.

Blindly, he pulls a Stimpak from his pocket, tears the package with his teeth and sinks the needle into her arm. Bleeding in the rubble, V snorts. "I try so hard to get you to use those, and you just go and give 'em back to me."

Her speech is slurred; pupils dilated.

"You are injured," Charon grunts—he is not sure whether he means it as explanation or defense. Gingerly, he feels her hairline, checking for any obvious breaks in the bone beneath. V winces, but her skull feels whole, her skin closing beneath his fingers even as he searches.

Concussed, he thinks. Only concussed.

"That's another one of those modifications Dad made," V says. Already her speech sounds improved. "Hard head."

But when Charon pulls her to her feet, V stumbles, unsteady. Still, she pushes his hand away when he takes another Stimpak from his pocket. "I'm alright."

"You are injured," he repeats and Charon is not afraid, but in his head he sees her airborne again, crashing into the wall.

"My balance is shot," she tells him, leaning against a filing cabinet. "Another stimpak will fix the headache, but then I won't be able to walk." At his look, V adds. "They make me dizzy. We need to get the kids and get out."

Sucking in a breath, V starts forward and immediately careens into a wall. Charon does not wait for a command. He loops an arm under hers, lifts her back onto her feet and into him.

"Lean on me," he says. "Match your pace to mine."

V snorts, but her smile is still hazy, unfocused. "Giving orders now? I like it."

"We need to get out."

Adjusting her grip on her gun—on him—V nods. Charon can feel every spasm of her muscles against his side.

In his head, he hears the sound she made when she fell—barely a breath, a wheeze, a whisper.

His name.

"Get the kids, get out," she agrees. "That's the plan. Dusty said there should be at least two."

Charon pauses, listening. "This floor is clear," he decides, feels V relax into him, just a little.

"I can hear them in the basement, though," she says. "And there's only one non-hostile in the… in the holding cells, I think that is?"

When they round the corner, the woman-child in the cell gasps. Whether it is at the sight of him or his employer—muddied to the neck, the right half of her face covered in blood—Charon does not know. He ignores everything but V, settles her as gently as he can on the jail floor.

"You are injured," he says, crouching before her. "It is my function to protect you. If we continue to engage hostiles, I cannot ensure your safety."

V purses her lips. "And what, you go it alone?"

"You are a liability," Charon insists. "Mistress, _I cannot ensure your safety._ "

V must see something in his face, in his stance. She sighs, closes her eyes. "Alright. Then what do we do?"

"You remain here," he tells her. "I will clear the basement."

V grimaces. When she looks at him, her eyes almost focus. "I don't like you going alone."

Charon remembers her words from the afternoon, how very little comfort they actually brought. Still, they are all he has.

"I will take care," he promises, and though V frowns, she nods.

"Alright."

Charon reloads his gun, means to stand—means to _go_ —but stops. Gingerly, his fingers graze V's arm, a fleeting touch, barely there at all. Her eyes snap to his, searching. Charon swallows.

"Be here when I return," he says. It is almost a question.

V grins, a vicious bearing of teeth, and knocks a fresh cartridge into her carbine. "Always."

* * *

The more open floor plan of the basement facilitates easier combat. Charon ducks around corners, fires high and often, takes out three super mutants within fifteen minutes. He kills clean and vicious.

His employer waits above, injured, with a child as likely to shoot herself as anything else. He will not give _any_ the opportunity to reach the stairs.

Charon kills the last super mutant in an old kitchen—finds it ranting over its captive and taking careful aim, fires both barrels through its open mouth. Even when the monster's body hits the floor, Charon can still feel V's blood sliding between his fingers, her heat at his side.

Drawing his knife, he slices through the boy's bindings. The kid flinches at the sight of him, but does not protest. "Who—who are you?"

"Can you walk?" Charon demands. Immediately, the boy scrambles to his feet.

"Yeah. I'm okay. Okay enough, anyway."

"Can you shoot?"

"Handguns?" he offers and Charon doesn't like the boy's faltering surety, but they have little option. He arms the boy with an assault rifle from one of the fallen mutants, orders him to follow, and returns down the hall.

He takes the steps two at a time, straining for any sound above.

If more have come—

The noise, he thinks, and Paradise Falls less than four miles off—

But when he reaches the main floor, the building remains silent. Charon returns to the holding cells without incident, finds V sitting outside the woman-child's now open cell with her gun pointed at the door, steady, wedged in the space between her knees.

Immediately, he returns to her side. V shoves herself upright, using the cell door for leverage. "Let's go," she says. "I'll take the rear, you two behind Charon. No one shoots until he does—understand?"

"Mistress—" he starts, but V purses her lips, determination in the set of her jaw.

"I can walk. If I'm on the ground, I can even shoot. Let's go."

He has risked an argument twice today already. Charon does not question his orders again.

"Very well," he says, takes point, and leads the way to Big Town.

* * *

They return without incident, though V flinches at the noise the children make, laughing, crying, reaching for each other and crowding her. Charon cuts a path between them, leads V into open air again. He chooses a boarded up house on the edge of the fortifying wall and kicks down the door.

At his side, V laughs, low in her chest. "My hero."

Charon glances back, checking her balance, her eyes, her hairline for fresh blood. V sighs, though she smiles. Her fingers find his arm. "I'm alright," she says. "I've had worse."

Still, when she flicks on her Pip-boy light and walks inside, Charon follows close enough to risk stepping on her heels. If it bothers her, V doesn't mention. She explores the house with careful, teetering steps, one hand on the wall.

They find little in the house other than a queen-sized mattress remaining on the bed. Between them, they manage to wrestle it into the front room. And Charon thinks he will have to argue his employer into resting, but V drops her pack beside the bed without complaint. She kicks her boots away and undresses in silence, sits down on the mattress with bare legs stretched in front of her.

Charon watches from the doorway, suddenly unsure what to do with his hands.

If V notices his indecision, she does not comment. Instead she pulls her jacket to her, removes a small silencer. "Look what I found."

"10mm," he says.

"Yes. And I have a very good use for this."

V smiles. Carefully, she removes the broken 10mm from the bottom of her bag, begins to disassemble it on the mattress between her legs. Charon wonders at the change, at the woman in the subway with a tightened jaw, biting out, " _It stays broken."_

V must read it in his face, because she smiles, almost sadly, shrugs one shoulder.

"I thought it was time," she says. And then, nodding at the expanse of mattress at her side. "Room for two."

Charon hesitates—he should stand, should stay wary, should _protect her_ as is his function—but V smiles and he relents. Glad to be out of his armor in the heat and the stagnant air of the boarded up house, Charon strips and gently, seats himself beside her.

For the most part, they sit in silence. V works; Charon watches.

It takes longer than usual for V to repair such a simple break, but by the time she slots the silencer into place, her hands no longer waiver and Charon no longer worries.

At last, with the gun finished and tucked away, V asks, "How good are you at robotics?"

As with their afternoon, it is not a question Charon expects. "I am proficient," he tells her, tense, waiting for the next question, waiting for simulation pods, for old gunfire and Brahms.

But V only hums, leans back on her hands. "They have some old robots lying in the junk heap. A protectron. Couple of the big ones. Big guns."

"Sentry bots."

V smiles, tilts her head to fix that smile on him. "You noticed."

Charon hands clench, restless on his knees. "It is my function."

"I have some parts. Fusion batteries, scrap, that kind of thing. I'd like to see if they can be fixed. What do you think?"

"I will see what I can do," he says.

"Tomorrow."

"As you wish."

For a moment more, they are silent. V lies down on the mattress beside him. He can feel her heat against his hip, solid, like the weight of a warm gun and Charon begins to relax.

"Hey, Charon?" V says at last. He turns, finds her eyes in the watery light of her Pip-boy. "Who fixed Cerberus? Robots aren't really Winthrop's thing. I assumed it'd been Quinn, but I never asked."

"Quinn wrote the programing."

V smiles. "And you worked the screwdriver?"

Considering their day, it is a small enough concession. Charon sighs. "Yes."

V laughs at his tone, but lets the matter drop. The silence returns. Charon reaches around her, retrieves her carbine and begins to clean. Without moving from her spot, V watches him work.

"We did good today, Charon," she murmurs, nearly asleep—offers him a lazy smile when he glances down at her. "We did real good."

Holding the barrel of V's guns between his hands, Charon falls still. She is… not wrong.

After fifteen years in the corner of a bar, after one hundred and fifty years bouncing between scavengers, Charon has stumbled upon an employer to give him purpose—to give him a _good_ purpose, to utilize him in a way his organization would not— _could_ not—have anticipated.

 _Big damn heroes_ , someone had said to him once, very long ago. Somewhere after Anchorage, he thinks. At the time he had not felt like a hero. He had felt like a weapon—a one-man war, the means to an end. The battle had not been his, nor the outcome anything beyond another satisfactory mission.

Today, though… Today, Charon does not feel like a weapon. Not with V.

He thinks these kids might have a fighting chance.

In the dim gloom of the house, V snoring gently at his side, Charon feels… proud.

They did _good_ today.


	8. Chapter Eight

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 8

* * *

They leave Big Town with the majority of the robots fixed and running. The sentries don't have missiles, but V had more than enough 5mm stashed away to compensate. She refuses payment—all but an 8-ball from a quiet boy barely higher than her chin—and leaves with several promises to return.

On the bridge, Charon notices his employer considering Paradise Falls in the distance. But V is smart—mean, not suicidal—and with a concussion, with only him, she would not make it much farther than the gates.

Still, Charon admires her for thinking of it.

They walk around Big Town's wall, heading east, towards the river again.

"Back to Megaton," V tells him. "Although, I suppose it's just _to_ Megaton in your case. You ever been?"

He shrugs. V shakes her head. "Right. Stupid question. I forgot your wild love-affair with a bar corner."

Without meaning to, Charon snorts. V's face lights. She nudges him in the shoulder, grinning. "Humor! Ha. Looks good on you."

Charon rolls his eyes. Delighted, his employer laughs.

They fall into a companionable silence that lasts most of the way to Megaton.

* * *

By the time they arrive, V can walk a straight line again. She holsters her carbine, humming a song beneath her breath. A bar-song, Charon thinks—he recognizes the cadence, but does not remember the words. He thinks he remembers her singing it in Arefu, lying on her back and pointing out stars.

"I have some friends here," V says when the gates open, bright-eyed and eager. Her fingers dart to his wrist and away. "I'll introduce you. We'll drink."

Charon nods, holsters his shotgun. He thinks of Big Town—so many bodies barely higher than his chest—and wonders what kind of friends V keeps.

He finds Megaton bigger than he remembers. But then, the last time an employer had passed through here, people still eyed the bomb with trepidation. Now, settlers touch it as they pass—for luck, it seems—while nearby a man in nearly white robes preaches the end of days. Houses have sprung from the fortifying walls like mushrooms in the last few decades. Charon recognizes only the Brass Lantern—though the name has changed—and the shack now advertising a doctor's clinic.

Charon expected this. He does not expect the people.

Even in the territory around Underworld, traders _used_ to ghouls would balk at coming near him. Too tall, too ravaged—Charon knows he is a thing of nightmares. But here, people shoot him only a first startled glance. Then, like clockwork, their eyes slide to V and they relax. A great many people greet her by name. They touch her, offer her things. A few even nod hello to him.

Then, as they follow a dirt path around the right-hand side of the city, a small boy runs up to V and pushes a crumpled scrap of paper into her hand.

"Me and Maggie drew this with the colors you brought," he says, scrubbing the toe of his shoe in the dust. "We wanted to make something for you since you made the bad things go away." And then, craning his neck up at Charon. "Hi, mister."

Hesitantly, Charon nods to the boy. It seems to be all that the child requires; his attention returns quickly to V.

Charon, too, looks over his employer's shoulder at the paper in her hands. A drawing, he sees, crude but careful. For a long moment, V says nothing. She stares at the page, tracing the lines with quiet reverence, and Charon is reminded of her fingers on his name.

At last, V swallows and smiles. "Thank you," she says, and had he not known her for ninety-seven days, Charon would not have caught the waver in her voice. "It's beautiful. You captured my manly essence so well. I'll keep it forever."

"In your house?" the boy asks eagerly. "Will you put it on your wall?"

"You know what? I'm going to keep this one with me. Right here," she says and shows him, tucking it into an inside pocket of her coat, over her heart. "So I can look at it all the time. But you draw me another one and I'll put it on my wall. Anywhere you want. Promise."

Clapping his hands, the boy grins. "Okay. This time I'll do a yao-guai—and your friend can be in it, too!"

In a flash, he slings his arms around V's waist, squeezes tight and runs off again, galloping around the corner. Charon hears a metal door swing shut, looks to his employer and finds her standing shock still, one hand pressed over the drawing in her pocket.

"Hear that?" she asks and smiles. "You will forever be immortalized next to my majestic visage. Quite the honor."

Charon shrugs. Inwardly, he wonders at the child's easy acceptance of an old monster, his armor long stained with blood.

But then, he walks with V—and V makes the bad things go away.

Without quite meaning to, Charon thinks of the yao-guai and V's fingers on its scabby ears. He wonders if she makes a habit of taming monsters.

He wonders if she even knows she does it.

"Let's go," V says. She smiles all the way to the bar—Moriarty's, another of the features Charon does not remember—and she's humming again by the time she pushes open the door.

But then, seeing the bartender, V's smile fails.

Charon recognizes him, though the name escapes him—Got or Gob. One of Carol's foundlings, long missing. Someone has worked him over. Even in the dim lighting and sullen strips of sun, the left side of his face shines a sickly purple, one eye swollen shut. He risks a careful glance at the sound of the door opening, then looks again and beams.

"V!" he says. "You're back."

V's face does not change. Still as stone, she drops her pack on the floor. Charon can see the muscles jumping in her jaw, her hands shaking, balled into bloodless fists.

Slowly, Gob's smile fades. He looks away, down at the bar—at two splinted fingers. "It's not as bad as all that," he murmurs. "I've had worse."

"Charon," she says, her voice like stone. "I need you to wait outside."

"Mistress?" he asks, together with Gob's concerned, "V?"

V kneels down, takes the silenced 10mm from her bag. This close, Charon sees that she has etched two words into the barrel.

_Never Again_

"Charon," she repeats. "I need you to wait outside."

Charon does not know her history, but he can see a part of it, here, carved into the barrel of a once-broken gun.

Quietly, he steps outside.

A minute passes. Charon hears a nearly inaudible _pft_ , followed by the sound of some two-hundred odd pounds hitting an unsteady wooden floor.

Another minute later, the door to the bar opens. V's eyes are dark, a wolf staring through the flock.

"Get the sheriff."

* * *

The sheriff, Charon finds, wears the garb of a Regulator. He has had dealings with them before, though never on the side he would prefer—a pattern he seems likely to continue. Still, the man comes readily when Charon asks. Because he came in with V.

Returning to Moriarty's, they find V sitting at the bar, her coat and pack by the door, obviously unarmed. Fury burns in every line of her body, coiled like a spring on the edge of her bar seat, clutching a child's drawing in her hand. Charon has seen her with her mouth full of blood, wielding carbine and knife together with brutal efficiency.

He thinks V has never looked more dangerous than she does today.

"You look at Gob, _sheriff_. You take a good long fucking look at his face." She turns, teeth clenched, shaking, her eyes a bitter black. "And then you explain to me _exactly_ why you stood there and let it happen again."

Simms turns to Gob cringing at the register. To his credit, the sheriff takes that long look and has the decency to look ashamed. When at last he faces her again, he sucks in a deep breath.

"V," he says gently. "What did you do?"

"What I always do," she says, stares him down and stares him through. "I made the bad thing go away."

The old Regulator sets his jaw, turns his face away. But they do not, as Charon expects, end up in a fire-fight. Instead, Simms sighs, rubs a sore spot between his eyes.

"You know why I couldn't." It sounds like an old argument.

V shakes her head.

"You coward," she spits. "You are not the hero your son thinks you are."

Simms recoils as if he has been struck, face taut. "V—" he starts, but V does not let him speak.

"Are you going to shoot me, or are you going to help me bury this fucking sack of shit?"

A taut moment stretches by. Behind her, Gob locks the register and drops the key in his pocket. "I'll help," he offers quietly. It seems to be the confirmation Simms was waiting for.

Briefly, the sheriff closes his eyes. "I don't want my boy to see the body," he says. "Give me five minutes. And find a sheet."

V nods. In her eyes, the wolf lowers its head. "Done."

* * *

That night, V doesn't sleep. She sits on her couch, filthy from digging and still armored despite the heat, holding the boy's drawing in her hands. Charon waits nearby; his place is at her side.

"It would be so easy," she whispers, an hour into her vigil. "That line in the sand."

"You are not Azhrukhal," Charon tells her, as gently as he is able.

But V only shakes her head.


	9. Chapter Nine

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 9

* * *

On the other side of midnight, V's Pip-boy begins beeping. Though she slaps at the device, tapping the screen and jamming buttons, the beeping continues.

At last, V rips it from her arm, throws it across the room. It hits the wall with a metallic clang, crackles, and announces an incoming distress message from Vault-Tec Vault 101.

V goes still. Charon eyes the open nerve ports on her arm, glowing angry red and threatening to bleed. A girl begins to speak, barely grown into the woman in her voice.

"Stop looking for your dad and help _stop_ mine," she says, words strained with a low, passive anger. "I changed the door password to my name. If you're hearing this—if you still care enough to help me—you should remember it."

Charon feels a fire on his jaw. His fingers itch. Many people have come to V requesting help—those with much and those with nothing. But regardless, they came with respect, with whatever payment they could afford. This barely grown voice in the machine offers nothing. It holds no respect, only poorly hidden resentment.

V does not move. She stares at the flakes of dirt scattered between her boots and listens as the message replays again, every muscle in her body strung like wire. Quietly, Charon rises. He retrieves the Pip-boy, disables the signal to stop the noise, and returns to her side.

"I have to go," V says.

Carefully, Charon rests her Pip-boy on the couch between them. Still, V does not move, only looks at the Pip-boy like a severed limb.

"I have to go," she whispers again.

And Charon hates the falter in her voice, hates Moriarty—hates Gob, even, for letting it come to this—but his place is at V's side. If it is within his ability to assist her, he will do so.

"Then we will go," he says.

V swallows, nods. A mask descends, hard as stone. The wolf bulges beneath her seams. She straightens, slaps the Pip-boy onto her wrist and grabs her gun.

* * *

She does not speak again until they reach a path in the nearby rocky hillside.

"Don't shoot anyone," she says, and Charon can see the ghost of her own boot prints here, preserved against the wind. "A lot of them are dicks, but they're mostly just scared."

"As you command."

"They've never…" she stops at the rickety wooden door and closes her eyes, breathes as though something pains her. "They've never seen a ghoul before, Charon. And you're enormous. This could be bad."

He nods. "I understand."

And he does. She wore this face before, in the long weeks before Arefu. He recognizes the shape of the pain that plagues her.

His comfort. Again. As though he is designed for such a thing.

V's fingers drop onto the handle of the door. Still, she hesitates. "You can stay here if you want."

Charon holds his ground. "Is that your _order_ to me?"

V does not look at him. Charon finds he wants bitterly to touch her, to steal her attention from the nagging voice in her computerized cufflink, to return her to her place at his side. Quietly, he adds, "It is my function to protect you."

Without a word, V reaches out and squeezes his hand. He feels her heat through his glove—there and gone, like so much else—and then she turns, opens the unsteady wooden door and heads inside.

Charon follows, as he will always follow. But when he looks at her—at the lines of her back squared like blades, _unsafe_ screaming in the curve of her fingers—he sees _Never Again_ on the barrel a once-broken gun. And Charon thinks that he would gladly shoot them all here, one by one, just to hurt the person that put the necessity of those words into her head.

He is an old monster—trained, but badly tamed.

Charon thinks of the yao-guai. His fingers itch, but he has been given orders.

And so he follows.

* * *

Inside, when the heavy door finally squeals out of the way, they find a body in a vault suit slumped against the control panel. Immediately, V goes to its side. She feels for a pulse, though by its color, it is obvious the boy has been dead for some time.

"Fuck, Jim," Charon hears her whisper. In the nearby control booth, something rustles.

Carefully, he steps past her, easing around the corner. Here, he finds a radroach, head buried in another body's gut-wound, an empty stealth-boy still strapped around its arm. Charon nudges the insect away from the body with the toe of his boot and stomping, crushes its head.

"Is there another one?" V asks at the noise, voice hollow. He hears her footsteps cross the metal floor, feels her at his side before he can think of a way to tell her _he is dead; there is nothing you can do._

She recognizes this body, too, but doesn't name it. Charon reads the pain in her arms, in her too-tight jaw as she crouches quietly at its side, closes the staring eyes, pulls the vault suit tighter around the hole in its belly.

Just as quietly, she rises and walks away. He sees she has done the same for the body at the door panel—smeared the blood from its cheek and rearranged its hair to cover a 10mm hole.

V's grief is silent but palpable, a living thing writhing in the air around her.

Charon feels a sudden ocean gape between them and he does not know how to bridge the gap.

"Someone's in the next room," she tells him, voice hard, cavernous. "Stay behind me as much as you can."

When V opens the door, a middle-aged man in vault riot gear jerks at the sight of them, swings his gun up and into her face. Before Charon can swing his own shotgun down—before he can weigh breaking an order against protecting his employer—V flashes forward, faster than he has ever seen her move. When she steps back, she holds the guard's gun in her hands.

"Sorry, Mr. Gomez," she says as the man reels backwards. "I don't want to hurt you, but I like my face where it is."

Abruptly, midway through scrambling for the next door, the guard stops. He looks up, squinting.

"Veronica? My god, it _is_ you. You came back. What? _How_?" And then his eyes travel behind her, widen, whites showing. He staggers back. "Veronica, _what_ —?"

What. Not who. Charon's jaw tightens, but he holds his position, as he has been ordered.

"My friend," V snaps and her anger on his behalf—her vehemence, her _claim_ —surprises him.

He has not—

He has _never—_

"Do… do they all look like that out there?" the man asks.

V's fists clench and Charon sees she must force them open again. She purses her lips, sucks in a deep breath through her nose. "He got _hurt_ , Mr. Gomez. A kind of fire."

"Oh. _Oh,_ I'm so sorry," he looks up at Charon. This time he hides the flinch. "I didn't realize. Down here, we don't—"

"I got a distress signal," she interrupts. "I assume it was meant for me?"

"A… a distress signal?" the man frowns. "I don't know anything about that."

V shrugs, taps her Pip-boy until the robotic voice announces a distress message for Vault-Tec Vault 101. She turns it off again, before the woman-child's voice can make her accusations. The man shakes his head.

"Probably from the rebels. I wouldn't share that too widely. The kind of trouble they could get into—hell, the kind of trouble _you_ could get into… if I were you, I'd turn around and walk right back out." He offers her a shaky smile, wipes his palms on the exposed legs of his suit. "I won't tell anyone you were here."

V shakes her head. "You know I can't do that."

"I thought it was worth a shot. If the Overseer catches you here…"

"He'll what?" she asks, her voice hard like a gunshot. "Have me killed, leave my rotting corpse to decorate the vault like Wilkins and Armstrong back there? Let him try."

"I know. Veronica, believe me, I know. We've tried— _I've_ tried—but he's… God, he's got us all on lockdown. We're meant to hold our positions, hell or high water. He won't even let us move the bodies. Says it's a plot by the rebels."

She cocks her head, teeth bared, trying for a smile but reaching only nightmares. "Dead kids or the incinerator?"

Gomez shrugs, pushes up the visor of his helmet to rub a hand over his eyes. His eyes a purpled and heavy with lack of sleep. "Both. Either. I don't know. He's really lost it this time."

V sighs, softens. "Well, I'll fix it," she says. Carefully, she hands the man back his gun. "Get some sleep, Mr. Gomez. Say I took you unaware, left you on the security cot."

Gomez shakes his head. "I wish I could."

"I can nerve-pinch you—"

"Freddie's with them," he says and abruptly, V's argument stutters out. "One of the rebels. I can't, Veronica. The Overseer's too suspicious already. As long as he thinks I… disapprove of all this, Freddie has a chance of coming back okay."

V's meets his eyes. She reads his resolution there and nods. "Right," she says, and she is once again the woman who bartered Azhrukhal's life. "Then I'll move fast."

* * *

A series of short corridors leads them to a large, open room with many hallways branching from it. At the sound of voices, he and V keep low, creeping around the corner. A very old man stands behind a metal table, holding a shaking 10mm in both hands, sweeping every open doorway. Charon scans for others, spots a figure watching from a high window framed by signs graffitied to read _fuck you, Overseer!_

Reaching forward, he taps V twice on the arm, draws a circle where she can feel it, points up— _I have a shot_.

V shakes her head. She lifts her hand to sign to him when a boy comes careening through a doorway at the far end of the hall, attracting her attention. V freezes, teeth clenched.

"Back off, Freddie. I'm warning you!" the old man starts, trembling gun fixed on the level of the boy's chest.

"Fuck that noise, man!" the kid shouts back, snapping the color of his leather jacket. "We're getting out of this tin-can one way or—"

The gun goes off. The kid startles, falls, scrambles backwards and tears around the corner. Immediately, V is on her feet, striding forward.

"Officer Taylor, disarm!" she barks. "You almost shot a civilian!"

The old man jumps and spins, gun still held out in front of him. "I—I didn't mean to shoot. But these crazy rebels— _Veronica_?" and then, like two-hundred year old clockwork, Taylor's eyes find Charon and his aim abruptly changes. " _What in god's name?"_

Veronica strides forward, grabs him by the wrist and forces his arm down.

" _He_ is my friend. Give me the gun, Taylor. I won't ask you again."

And here—V makes her claim again.

In two hundred years, Charon has been called many things. Bodyguard, bouncer, weapon, soldier, employee. He has never had an employer who considered him a… a _friend_ —has never had an employer who would plant herself before a gun and defend his humanity. The knowledge sits uneasy in his stomach, a burning weight, a pressure in his fingers.

Taylor looks between the two of them and slowly, his grip on the gun relaxes.

"Can't be too careful around these rebels," he mutters. "One of these days, something's gonna break."

"Something will break a lot sooner if you shoot at it," V says. "Go to bed."

"I can't. I'm on duty—"

"And now _I'm_ _home_ ," she snaps. For a moment, her eyes are too dark, her teeth too sharp. But it is only the light. V turns her head and her face softens, human again. "All kinds of crazy going on today, Mr. Taylor. Better that you're in bed for it."

"M…maybe you're right," he says, glances up at the Overseer in his window and back to her. His wrinkled face hardens. "I'm too old for this kind of foolishness!"

V smiles. "Yes, you are. Don't let him bully you, sir. You stick to what you know is right. This should all be over within a few hours, anyway."

* * *

When the old man goes his way, Charon and V take the door immediately to their left, beneath a sign that reads _storage_. Another body greets them here, this one without obvious blood, slightly fresher than the others. Its eyes are closed already, but V kneels down at its side just the same. She says nothing, clenches her teeth hard enough that he can hear the squeak of grinding enamel, and storms off down the hall.

Ducking their way through a make-shift barricade, they come upon another boy in a black leather jacket. For a moment, Charon mistakes him for the first—but this one holds his body like a street fighter, feet apart, limbs loose, a knife in one hand. Unlike the others, he hears their approach.

The boy whistles when V rounds the corner. With a flick of his wrist, the knife disappears into his sleeve.

"Damn," he sneers, too smug, one corner of his mouth turning up. "Look what's come waltzing back into the vault. Dr. J's very own pet monster, live and in the claws."

Abruptly, Charon reaches the ragged end of his tolerance. His shotgun drops into his hand. With two quick steps, he presses the barrel into the kid's neck, forces him back against the wall.

It is one thing for them to name _him_ a monster. His hands were stained with blood long before their grandfathers played at war in the wreckage _he'd_ created. But he will not— _he will not—_ tolerate such an insult to his employer.

To his credit, faced with a real monster and a loaded weapon, the boy doesn't panic as he expects. Instead—immediately—he looks to V.

"Woah, V, what the fuck? Call him off!"

V frowns. Her fingers find the barrel, pull his gun down. "It's alright, Charon. Butch isn't a threat; he was just badly socialized as a child," she says. As she talks, her fingers sketch a pattern at her side— _return, plan._

In other words, _mind your orders_. Grudgingly, he holsters his gun. Butch coughs, pushing away from the wall.

"Jesus," he says, rubbing his throat. Even with a bruise blooming above his Adam's apple, he risks a glare in Charon's direction. "Where'd you pick up this one?"

V's jaw tightens. "Don't fuck with Charon," she snaps. "He's with me." And then, softening, "How've you been?"

The kid sobers, looking grim. "Not great. You've gotta fix this, V. We sure as hell can't. Everything's gone to shit."

"Yeah, I figured. Her High and Holiness actually risked Daddy's wrath to send a distress message."

Butch snorts. "She risked Daddy's wrath recording it. You wanna take a guess whose ass she put on the line _getting_ it there?"

"I figured." V sighs. She gestures to his hip, "What's with the 10mm? Where's your dad's old rifle?"

His face darkens. His eyes fix down the hall. Jaw tight, very quietly, he says, "Where the fuck do you think?"

And there is old history between them—a childhood between them, Charon realizes, feeling out of ammo—because V needs no clarification, only purses her lips and nods. "I'll get it."


	10. Chapter Ten

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 10

* * *

Unlike the others, with this, V is not gentle. She picks the lock on an apartment door and shoulders her way inside, heedless of the bleary eyed woman on the couch, half-dressed and clutching a service rifle.

Despite the rifle, the woman does not seem to mind the intrusion. Seeing V, she snorts and pulls a half-empty bottle of whisky from the couch cushions.

"Wondering when you'd turn up again," she slurs. "They said you were gone, but freaks like you always turn up again sooner or later."

Charon's fingers twitch. He can see the muscles bunched in V's neck—a knot of tension hard enough to crack diamond. But V remains very still in the doorway, blocking him mostly from sight. She says, "Mrs. Deloria, Butch needs his gun."

" _His_ gun?" She snorts. "It's his asshole father's gun—only thing he ever left me worth a damned thing. What're you gonna do, kill me for it?"

"Mrs. Deloria—"

"I see you brought another freak with you. Least _he's_ decent enough to wear his damage where people can see it."

V strides into the room. With the too-tight walls of the vault around her, she seems bigger here—as big as her legend, all teeth and muscle. "I will not ask you again."

"Fine, whatever. You've fucked up everything already, why not this, too?" She shoves the gun off her lap and staggers upright, away, towards another door.

It is as if the woman has ceased to exist. V does not spare her another glance, only picks up the rifle, even as the woman leans against the wall, sneering, "You ruined him, you know. Butch was a perfect baby until you and your father showed up. Now look at him. _You_ did that. You changed him."

V does not reply. She makes no indication she has even heard. They leave the woman to her drunken stupor, return the way they came. And Charon follows his employer, nearly shaking, a fire in every vein.

He is not a man for words; he does not have the words for this. Only rage, pure and blinding, on her behalf.

* * *

"About time," Butch drawls when they round the corner. "Here I thought you were supposed to be some kind of hero, Grognak. Faster than a speeding bullet and all that."

V snorts, tosses him his gun. The boy straps it over his shoulder with familiarity, like a piece slotting into place—and it was _his_ gun, with _his_ mother, but still, he sent V—subjected her to _filth_ for his own _comfort._

Charon finds he wants nothing better than to put his fist through the kid's mouth and _twist_ until his head pops off.

V shrugs, shoulders low, eyes dark. "Yeah, well. Trying not to eat my way through the vault today," she says. "You know how it is."

Butch laughs, throwing a proprietary arm over her shoulders. "Shit, baby. Birds gotta fly; monsters gotta eat."

Yes, Charon thinks, _monsters_ do—and seizes the boy by the collar, slams him into the wall and looms like the fucking monstrosity he is. A warning—only a warning. Were it not for V, he'd have killed this piss-ant already.

But a bullet wouldn't get through this kid's thick skull—Butch shoves his hand off, growling, "Fuck you, man. You don't like it, get the hell out. You are in _my_ house."

" _Stop_ ," V snaps, but when Charon glances her way her eyes are on the corridor, on the cameras. She does not sign it. If it is an order, she must address it to _him._ Charon's shotgun drops into his hand.

Butch laughs, hard and mean, and shoves his chest into the barrel. "You won't do it. V's got you by the shorthairs—you won't do _shit_ , man—"

And true, he cannot shoot. So Charon gives into his desire for physical violence. He strikes the kid hard in the jaw, precisely, taking only a tooth. Butch staggers, spits blood, but keeps his feet.

Though he has moderated the strength of the blow, grudgingly, Charon is impressed.

And then V shoves herself between them, a wolf without her sheepskin, raw and furious. She stares him down, puts her body a bare inch from his own until he feels her heat like a wall, like a threat.

Charon clenches his jaw, holds his ground, though his bones itch and his skin burns and _Never Again_ slinks in the dark corners behind his eyes.

When she speaks, her voice is nearly inaudible, too-even—a blistering, quite rage. "You could have killed him."

Personally, he does not consider it a great loss. "I could have," he agrees. "I did not."

"I gave you an order."

"You did not direct it to me."

The look on V's face—Charon wonders if she will hit him.

He wonders what he would do if she did.

But V does not move. She stands so close he can feel her pulse, can see the muscle jumping in her jaw.

"Vault 112," she hisses. "Is this fuckery more of the same?"

She does not hit him, but Charon feels as though he has been struck regardless.

"It is not," he grinds out, staring fixedly ahead.

"Then get your _shit_ _together_ ," she snarls, then spins, grabs Butch by the collar and reels him in until they are nearly nose to nose. To him, she says only, "You do _not_ fuck with Charon."

Butch swallows blood, shoulders tense, and nods. "Sorry, V. Bad call."

"Damn right," she says, and turns, marching off down the hall.

* * *

For all Charon hates Butch Deloria, the girl—Amata—is worse.

"Ronnie!" she yelps when they enter the room, scrambling from a classroom chair and it takes Charon too long to realize she means V. Amata bounds across the room, throws her arms around his employer's shoulders. "You came. Thank god, you came!"

Butch sniggers as he idles past. "That's what she said," he mutters through the blood in his mouth, taking ammo and a stimpak from a snake-carved desk.

Again, Charon wants to hit him. But the urge fades at the look on V's face—a tightly controlled mask, tension balled in her shoulders, every muscle in her body straining to run, to leave, to get anywhere but _here._ Watching her, Charon longs for raiders, for subway tunnels and caves and easy threats. It draws a gun; he shoots it.

He does not know how to protect her here.

V shrugs. Her eyes dance away. "I was in the area," she says and Charon sees the woman he first met in Ninth Circle—a collection of whichever traits her mark might like to see.

She is Ronnie for Amata, he thinks. Veronica for the vault, for her father. So far, only Butch has called her V. Charon doesn't like the boy any better, but he likes the others less.

Amata frowns, her lips pressed in a hard line. "I missed your sense of humor, Ronnie, but this isn't the time for jokes! The whole vault is in chaos. People are _dying_. So do you think you can maybe _try_ and take this seriously?"

The muscles dance in V's jaw. Her hands clench, bloodless white. "I _am_ ," she says, too quiet, too calm. "Exactly what do you think I do with my time, Amata? Do you think I've spent every day of the last six months lurking around outside the vault, just fucking _panting_ for the day you'd open the doors?"

The look on the girl's face, the ill-disguised surprise, betrays that this is exactly what she had believed. V shakes her head in disgust. "You were _lucky_ ," she says. "I haven't been past here in months. I stopped by Megaton yesterday to see some friends. So yeah, I was _in the area._ "

Amata takes an uneasy step back. For the first time, she looks at V and _sees her_ —takes in her dirt, her blood-stained armor, the company she keeps.

"Friends like him?" she asks softly, almost an accusation, a nervous swallow behind a brave face.

Quietly, V tips her head. "Be very careful what you say next."

"Yeah, watch it," Butch says, the swelling already receding from his jaw. "V's real touchy about her boyfriend." And then, quickly, "Not judging—just saying."

Through force of will, Charon slows his breathing, tries to ease the throbbing between his eyes. These kids, puppy-fatted, still growing into their feet and hands—he knows V is the same age, knows how vaults work, their children born in batches—but she is so far and above them, so unspeakably different…

...and behind her stone-faced mask, so alarmingly fragile today. He can see the cracks, sense the damage, but Charon does not know how to protect her from the things he cannot shoot.

"Alright," Amata says at last. "I guess if you're some kind of _mercenary_ now, we'll just get down to business."

V grins through gritted teeth. "Please do."

"We—I hacked my father's terminal," she says. "The vault's been opened before. You… you weren't born in the vault, Ronnie. You and your dad, you came in from the outside. And there were… research parties before that, coming and going—Butch's dad was part of one, and Freddie's aunt. But something happened. One day they just didn't come back. My father shut the vault and made everybody swear to say it'd never been opened at all. But even though we know the truth, my father still won't let us make our own decisions."

"Yeah. Great. Now exactly what do you expect me to _do_?"

And though she has asked for this—risked another's safety to send a call for help—still, Amata seems surprised in this face of his employer's vehemence. She balks, looks at V as though she expected someone else.

"Well?" V snaps, and like an old motor turning over, Amata finally gains her speed.

"We don't want to leave the vault," she says. "We just want the _choice_. Things don't have to—to stagnate down here anymore. We can trade with the outside. We can actually stick our heads out and see what's _happening_ in the world." Sucking in a deep breath, she squares her shoulders, playing at a power she will never have. "Can you just… talk to my father? You've been out there and _you're_ still alive. He'll listen to you."

"You want the choice," V repeats, quietly. "You want me _talk_. You sent out a distress call so that I'd drop everything for a _conversation_."

From his seat atop a desk, Butch snorts, massaging his newly healed jaw. "That's what I said. We should just _take_ what we want, there's enough of us."

V spins. " _Is_ there? And what about Wilkins? Armstrong? Taylor? Was there enough of _them_? Did they get a fucking _choice_? Did they get to _talk_?"

Butch holds up his hands. "Sorry, V. Jesus. Lay off the messenger."

"Ronnie, please," Amata says. "You know my father won't listen to us."

V bares her teeth. "And you think he'll listen to me? The vault monster? Dr. J's little science experiment?"

Charon forces his jaw to unclench, his hands to relax.

Coming from her, the words are so, so much worse. He thinks of Big Town, of Arefu, of Megaton and its disarmed bomb. Charon has known monsters. He has never known _anyone_ like V.

"Well, somebody has to stop him and we _can't_ ," Amata snaps. She crosses her arms, angles her body away. "Are you going to help us or not?"

V shrugs. "Fine," she says. "I'll stop him."

And though his employer has agreed to help—though she has _dropped everything_ to help—Amata shakes her head, has the nerve to add, "Not like _that_ , Ronnie. Don't hurt him. Just share your experience." And then, "Though, you might want to leave your… friend down here. He's not exactly a poster-boy of the American Dream."

V turns, very slowly, and fixes the girl with her full attention. She does not say anything. Standing at his side, she does not have to.

"Fine," Amata backs down. "Whatever. Just, please, don't kill my father. He may have made some bad choices, but he's still the same person who's always looked out for us."

"Not for us. For _you_ ," V says, eyes cold. "You are a grown woman. It's time you pulled your head out of your daddy's ass and realized the goddamned difference."

She turns then—ignoring Butch's catcall, Amata's indignant protest—and lopes from the classroom. Charon follows, falling easily into his place at her side.

"Ronnie!" Amata calls when she will not answer, running out after her. " _Please."_

 _"No._ " V does not turn, keeps her head down and keeps walking, steady, her shoulders even with his own. "I'm not promising you another miracle. One was more than fucking enough."


	11. Chapter Eleven

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 11

* * *

The Overseer does not flinch when they enter. At the sound of the door opening, he glances over his shoulder, cocks an eyebrow and returns to his vigil at the window.

A performance.

Almodovar carries his shoulders steeled, his arms locked behind his back. A vein bulges along the flat of his hand where it clutches his opposite wrist. Though he looks out the window, his head turns ever so slightly towards them, straining to listen. One foot inches backwards, bears his weight, ready to run.

Charon has been trained to read targets. Almodovar is afraid.

"So this is the kind of element you choose to… befriend," he says, a bitter stab at amicability, staring too hard at the window, though every line of his body bends away. "I suppose it suits you, Veronica. Like attracts like."

The man is not obviously armed. Still, Charon eases closes to V. He wants to be near enough—wants to be ready, whatever comes.

He glances at his employer for a word, a sign, anything. Even _return, plan_ would settle the fire eating at his spine, but V does not see him. She looks only at the Overseer, her face blank.

"Yeah, I'm a monster," she says, too bland, too utterly unlike her. "And as sure as I am that it makes you feel so damn good to say it, if like attracts like, you've got two monsters standing in your office. And right now, only one of them is inclined to shoot. Would you like to guess who? Do you really want to play that game with me?"

The Overseer laughs then—a harsh bark, a sullen tremor of fear beneath the sound—and turns. "You're here to kill me? I expected as much. You never did have an ounce of tact."

V does not move. Her face does not change. "Oh, I've got just about an ounce. You're living that ounce right now. I want to know just what the hell you think you're doing."

" _Me_? I am doing what I have always done. I am _protecting the vault_."

"How can you protect the vault _from_ the vault?" V demands, though still— _still_ —her face does not change. She stares through the Overseer, her face like stone, and Charon realizes she has stopped blinking.

"You wouldn't understand. We are the last bastion of _true_ humanity left in this wasteland. And these—these _children_ want to throw it away. So yes, Veronica, I am protecting the vault. I am protecting the vault from its own stupidity."

"Really? And how many families do you have left after this last massacre, Almodovar? After your war on stupidity, how long before you start marrying cousins?"

Almodovar shakes his head. He crosses to his desk, puts the heavy block of metal between them, as if it can protect him. "And the alternative is so much better? _Rutting_ with every mutated, disease-riddled plague wandering around outside? The objective of this vault is to keep at least some vestige of humanity intact. I will _not_ throw that to the wayside on a whim."

"Humanity isn't about genetic purity," V insists. "It's about hope. Surviving—thriving—despite everything. It isn't _living_ you're doing down here."

Almodovar snorts. He shuffles a stack of papers from his desk. As though they are not armed and angry. As though he has not killed children. As though he has nothing to fear. "You _would_ think so, wouldn't you? I'm sure it's what your father told himself so he could sleep at night."

Charon maintains his position at V's side, but his whole body throbs like a bruise, like a war, like a bad order.

He does not want to shoot Almodovar. He would not waste the shells. No, standing beside his employer, Charon wants to seize the Overseer and squeeze until the man chokes on his own tongue. He wants to put his head through that fucking glass window, let the weight of his body sink onto the shards. He wants to drag him outside, force him under the sun for the first time in his half century of life, and shove his head beneath the radiated water of Megaton's bomb.

Charon looks at V. She does not look back. She does not blink. She does not move at all.

"Your only objective is to protect these people," she says. "And you have failed. So many people dead—so many _kids_ dead—because you couldn't _consider_ an option you didn't come up with."

"Oh no," the Overseer says. "I will not let you blame me. Your father—"

" _Left!"_ V bellows and Almodovar leaps backwards, terrified in the face of her shattered calm. She strides forward, slams her hands down on his desk, snarling, "He left! He walked away. You can curse him for abandoning the vault all you like, but _you_ killed Jonas. _You_ left the vault without a medical professional. Y _ou_ started cutting down children—Steven, Jim, Chip—left their corpses rotting at your gate."

Charon has seen her with a mouth full of blood, fending off raiders with carbine and knife. He has seen her unarmed, her hand clenched on a child's drawing. He has seen her vicious, bloodied, triumphant, injured.

He has not seen this.

They asked for a monster.

"I bet there's more, too," she murmurs, almost sweetly, so vicious, leaning across the desk. "Monica Kendall? Tom and Mary Holden? I didn't see them. You've got storerooms full of bodies, don't you? But every time you kill another child, my father is miles away, playing doctor in Rivet City. He does not dictate your actions any more than these goddamned radroaches do."

"He threw this vault into chaos!" the Overseer protests.

" _And you kept it there_ ," V hisses. She straightens, fixes the man with that unblinking stare. "My father may be a short-sighted asshole, but he is not the Overseer. It is not his job to maintain the peace; _it is_ _yours_."

Almodovar swallows. He inches backwards, tries for something like bravery. "You would gladly have me shoulder the blame alone, no doubt."

V only shrugs. "Fuck your blame. Out there, I make a living killing murderous scum. Do you think it matters to me whether or not the murdering scum realize what they are? No _,_ it fucking _does not,"_ she says. "So, _step_ _up_ , Almodovar. Amata's in charge down there. She asked me to talk, I've talked. Her house, her rules. But I'm done. I don't give a shit what kind of person you thinkyou are. I already know."

The Overseer forces a laugh. "Oh, do you?" he sneers, though Charon sees his hands shake. "A few months outside and you think you know what it's like to _protect_ people? You think you understand what it takes to _lead_?"

Even after fifteen years with Azhrukhal, Charon has never wanted to kill a man more. He wants to shoot—to hurt, to _tear_ —so badly his arms burn with the effort of remaining at his sides. He feels every clause and stipulation of his contract like a choke-chain—wants to slip his leash and sink his fingers into the over-fatted flesh of the Overseer's neck.

Standing before the desk, V remains poker-faced. She looks at the Overseer in much the same way as he has seen her look at feral dogs—a distant regret and a quiet line of sight down the barrel of her gun.

"There's a bullet waiting for you," she says, "and not one of mine. I just hope they break you first. I hope they destroy everything you love."

Almodovar laughs, but Charon hears the tremor. "Is that a _threat_?"

V does not answer.

She turns and walks away.

* * *

When they turn the corner, out of sight, Charon reaches for her. His fingers close around hers—an attempt at… at _comfort—_ but V stops. She looks up at him, blankly, as if seeing him for the first time.

Charon lets his hand fall.

He follows her, watching her shake, watching her peeling at her seams.

In silence.

* * *

"I'm leaving," she says to Butch, the moment they cross the barricade.

And the boy knows her. At least, he knows enough to worry. He frowns, sidles closer, gently. Months ago, V approached her yao-guai exactly the same way.

"How'd it go with Fuck-face?" Butch asks. Carefully, he reaches out, but V steps away.

"Don't care. I'm leaving. You coming with me?"

Butch chews the inside of his cheek, looks at V a long time before he shakes his head. "Naw, man. There are some thinks a guy's gotta do himself, you know?"

Dark-eyed and unblinking in the hallway, V bares her teeth. It is almost— _almost_ —a smile. "I get it."

Hearing footsteps farther up the corridor, Charon pulls away from the wall, puts V at his back and waits. He hears her turn, hears the boy swing his rifle down.

The Overseer rounds the corner. Seeing them, he stops, lifts his palms to face them. "I need to speak to my daughter."

Butch keeps his rifle level, steady on Almodovar's chest. He glances at V. Only when she shrugs does he lower his weapon.

"Yeah, alright," he says and pulls back to let the man pass. "But you start any funny business, you're dead."

"Indeed," he says, lips pursed, eyeing the rifle as he steps gingerly around them. And then, looking at V, "You should be leaving. Your _services_ , such as they are, are no longer needed."

"Hey," Butch snarls, the barrel of his gun rising north. "Watch your fucking mouth, old man. She's saved your ass more times than you even _know._ "

But V only shrugs. "I'm already gone. See ya, Butch. Got a house in Megaton if you ever need a place to stay. Just ask Gob for the key."

Butch does not ask if she is sure—only reads her face and nods.

"Alright, V," he says.

V flicks her fingers. It is not a sign Charon recognizes. For a moment he stills, waiting, watching for clarification.

No clarification comes. Instead, Butch returns her gesture. It is a salute between them, Charon realizes. A small sign of respect. And he does not like the boy any better. He _does_ _not_.

But Charon thinks—suspects—that were it not for Butch Deloria, V would have become the monster they asked for.

She is not Azhrukhal.

She could have been worse.

* * *

When they reach the outer door, V stops. For a long moment she does not move, only stands there, staring at the corpse. Charon waits at her side, silent. He wonders what the boy was to her. A classmate? A lover? They were the same age.

"Mistress?" he murmurs, after a time.

"I don't know what to do with the body," she says, her voice so soft and sad. "I think he would have wanted to get outside, one way or another. See the sky."

For the first time, Charon sees how young she must be. He wants—wants desperately—to just… to…

He wants to fulfill his purpose. She is his employer. He will protect her.

"He is dead," Charon says.

"Yeah."

"Outside, dogs will find his body."

V swallows. "There's… there's a kind of poetry in that. You are what you eat. You are what eats you," she says. She blinks—finally—squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. "But he has family. Not that it saved him. Still. They'll know what to do."

His employer sucks in a deep breath. She forces a smile for him—small and shaking—though her stare remains far off. Together, they walk down the stairway and step over the threshold, heading out again.

"Wait!" Amata calls from behind them, skidding into the chamber. "Ronnie! My dad told me what you did."

If it is possible, V hunches even further into herself, slips farther away. In her eyes, Charon sees a hard and wintered waste.

Without inflection, V says, "Did he?"

"He's stepping down as Overseer. Asked for a committee review of his actions. That's—you said you weren't doing miracles anymore, Ronnie." The girl laughs—without fear, without concern. She is _happy._ "I guess you lied."

His employer looks at him, cracking down her seams. And the Overseer's daughter is _happy._

Charon's body burns. His hands clench uselessly at his side.

V shrugs. "I do that," she says. "Goodbye, Amata."

"Ronnie, wait. I—" Amata starts, hands clasped and restless on her belly.

"Amata, _stop_ ," V snaps. Long ago, Charon crossed a frozen river that could not hold his weight. Her voice reminds him of the sound the ice made, collapsing beneath his boots. "Keep safe. I won't be coming back."

"I'm so sorry, but—wait, what?" Finally, the words sink in and Amata stops. She frowns, then shakes her head, tries to smile, "Well, I guess that makes this easier, then. You… you _can't_ come back, Ronnie. You upheave everything. You unsettle people."

And though V has saved them from their own stupidity, though by rights every last member of this god-forsaken tin can owes her their life, V only nods. Amata hands her no burden she has not already shouldered the last twenty years alone.

"I know. I make a better monster than a neighbor."

"I'm sorry," Amata ventures. "About all of it. I'm sorry."

V shakes her head, jaw tense. "No, you're not," she says. "You're too much like your father."

Amata flinches. Her face hardens. Despite the body of her age-mate sprawled along the floor, she walks to the control panel, mouth tight. "I didn't ask for this," she says. A defense. An accusation.

"And I did?" V smiles, but only the right corner of her mouth twitches. "Good luck, Amata."

And reaching over, V flips the outer control panel, shutting the door herself.

* * *

V spends the remainder of the day hidden upstairs in her Megaton home. Charon stays below. He listens.

Mostly, she paces. For hours at a time, she paces. In between these hours he finds silence, broken only by the occasional strike against the wall—an object or a fist, he cannot tell.

When she finally emerges, well into the night, her face and armor are clean. Abraxo harassed the worst of the stains from her long coat, though shadow marks of blood remain. She looks at him. Attempts a smile.

"Going to the bar," she says. And though V has not slept in 26 hours—unhealthy for a human, worse for a recent head-wound—Charon follows.

It is his function.

* * *

When V walks into saloon, conversation stops. What few patrons linger at the edges of the bar shoot sneaking glances up at them, whispering, eyeing Gob alone behind the bar.

It takes the retired raider to break the tension, snorting, "Look, it's the vault asshole. How you doin', vault asshole?"

And though her eyes are ringed in purple, his employer laughs. "Fan-fucking-tastic, Jericho. Thanks for asking."

It is exactly the right thing to say. He is unafraid, she is unrepentant; people take their cue. Slowly, they return to their conversations, only a few last glances straying towards the door.

Jericho snorts, blows a smoke through his nose in her direction, but nods—a small show of respect—and returns to the bottle in front of him.

V swallows. Her fingers touch the place above her breast where beneath, the child's picture rests. Gingerly, she takes a seat at the bar. Gob frowns at the sight of her.

"You look like hell, kid. You okay?" he asks, gentle, and places a hand over hers.

Charon snaps to attention, ram-rod straight and shoulders hard. He watches V for a sign, for an indication that this advance is unacceptable—

But V only shrugs, half-smiles, squeezes his hand. "You want to go to Underworld?" she asks. "We're headed out. For awhile, I think. Don't know when we'll be back. If you wanted, we could escort you there."

Gob looks around at the other patrons. Habit, Charon thinks, because he stops and shakes his head, pulls up a stool of his own, so that he and V are level.

"Thank you," he says, voice low and earnest. "I can't tell you what it means that you'd ask—that you'd do that for me. But no. I'm… I'm okay here. Now. Because of you." He smiles at her. "So thanks, V. But you've done enough already."

She gathers his hands in hers, holds both like a prayer, staring into his eyes. "You sure?"

Gob smiles, tips his chin ever so slightly at Nova, leaning in the corner and pretending not to watch. "I'm sure."

V lets him go. "Okay, then," she says and Gob grins. He takes a couple of beers from beneath the counter. "On the house," he says, hands one to V and offers the other in Charon's direction. "You want one?"

Charon wantsto leave. He wants to shoot something. He wants to return to the vault, initiate the override that will cause it to self-destruct. His bones itch beneath crawling skin, but V turns around in her barstool, looks up at him, the same question in the tilt of her head.

"I can move," she offers. "You can put your back to the wall."

Slowly, Charon nods. He breaks away from his vigil at the door, feeling rusted, tight in every joint, and accepts the seat she leaves.

* * *

After several hours and several beers between them both, V elbows up from her seat at the bar.

"I'll be back," she says and then, when Charon moves to follow, "No, don't get up. I can make it to the head on my own. Not that drunk yet."

Reluctantly, he returns to his seat. His place is at her side, but Charon remains at the bar, waiting for her to return. A minute thuds by. He feels Gob watching him, though the man is very good at appearing to look elsewhere. Charon locks eyes with him, waiting, but fifteen years away from Underworld has changed him.

Or, perhaps, V has changed him.

In either case, he does not flinch away.

"She saved you too, huh?" he says, quietly enough that only Charon hears. Charon's face does not change, his stare does not falter. Nevertheless, Gob finds his answer. He smiles, dips his head. Says, "It's bad out there. You take care of her."

Stiffly, Charon nods. Though he does not need to—though nothing in his contract requires him to answer—he says, "It is my function."

Gob only shakes his head, chuckles softly, sets another beer beside his hand. "Function or choice?" he asks. "We both know there's a difference."

* * *

The question haunts him.

Function or choice?

There… _are_ certain stipulations in his contract for choice—a section left purposely vague to allow him a measure of autonomy in battle.

He thinks of the vault, seeing V surrounded by those she'd spent her life with, tense enough to shatter. He thinks of the Overseer, the physical pain of his restraint.

You take care of her, Gob had said.

Function or choice?

Charon lays awake, listening to V breathe nearby, and finds he does not know the answer.


	12. Chapter Twelve

And Wolves Beneath Our Seams

Part 12

* * *

They travel to Underworld, but do not remain for long. People stare as they pass, shoot uneasy glances in their direction. More than once, Charon catches whispers. Mostly curious, but an undercurrent of fear buoys them along. When V left, she walked away from a wreckage of a corpse and a river of bloodied caps.

A girl like her, they ask, what does she want Charon for?

They stay long enough for V to pass a letter to Carol, long enough to watch her clutch it to her breast, to cry, to attempt an offer of payment. V waves her off. "Gob's a friend of mine," she says.

Soon after, she shoulders her way through the museum doors and strides out, into the super mutant encampment.

Together, they slaughter everything.

And Charon knows his employer. Something is wrong. Something has changed. V tries not to show it, but she wears her damage like a bandage—a challenge—stained in blood.

They work their way through DC, through subways and mutant bunkers, killing everything they encounter. V uses her radio to draw super mutants, blares Billie Holiday to pull them through bottle necks, through minefields and homemade guillotines.

 _"Looks like Little Miss One-oh-One has created her very own Wasteland cleaning team,"_ Three-dog announces as V drops onto the back of a mutant from above, sinks her hunting knife into his spine. _"She and her enormous ghoul friend were spotted in downtown DC, slaughtering every big ugly they could fix their sights on."_

V drops with the mutant, rolls off and to her feet before the body hits the ground—fast, clean, her modified genes in full swing. Charon slams the butt of his shotgun into the head of a centaur, reloads, empties two barrels between its eyes.

_"They're out there fighting the good fight, boys and girls. And I mean really fighting. So if you see 101's bloody little whirlwind headed your way, give her some respect—and a healthy distance. There's not enough Abraxo in the world for those stains."_

When they surface—for ammo runs and bandaged wounds—the traders see her face, the blood in her teeth and on her hands, and charge her half of what they should. Charon hears them talking on those rare occasions V stops to eat. Only Quinn is brave enough to say what they do to her face.

"Got turned around out there," he says, one evening over Greta's stew. "Followed your spent shells home."

And he's joking—he's joking, but Quinn reaches in his pocket, places three of Charon's shotgun cartridges on the table, a jangling collection of V's empty 5mm.

" _Not enough Abraxo in the world_ ," Three-dog had said.

Charon looks at V's face, at the darkness in her eyes.

Three-dog is not wrong.

* * *

When they run out of super mutants, they work their way south and west, across the river, towards more open ground. They find more, kill more. Their strategy changes—explosives, higher ground.

V fixes up a rocket launcher, buys every missile from every passing trader. With some practice, she works it like a guided tactics system, can take the head off a super mutant at a distance that would have left his former superiors breathless. They carve their way through the DC outskirts in a cloud of bloody smoke.

But, eventually, even Lucky Harith runs out of rockets. Without a word, V sells him the launcher. She buys grenades, 5mm—hands the bag of caps to Charon and leaves him to pick whatever armament catches his fancy.

Harith offers him a sniper rifle. Charon considers it, remembering their subways and V on her belly in the rubble, grinning, " _I'd kill for a sniper rifle."_

But the gun is badly damaged—more project than protection—and V barely glances at him when he turns it over in his hands.

Charon buys more shotgun shells instead.

They continue through the wreckage of DC, working their way around in circles, killing everything more mutated than themselves.

He thinks she is trying to get to Rivet City, but cannot. _Never Again_ weighs her down like stone.

* * *

Charon still catches her awake some nights, holding his contract to her Pip-boy. She does not try to hide it—only shades her light so as not to wake him. Regardless, Charon feels her fingers on his name like a brand, aching, searching, desperate for something.

He waits, but she does not ask him about it again.

* * *

After several months, so caked in grime they end up scraping the gore from their boots with lawnmower blades and broken fenders, they find the Library.

"Just who the hell are you?" the desk clerk demands. "This area is off limits."

V tilts her head. She glances back at Charon, rolls her eyes. He shoulders his shotgun and shrugs.

"Who the fuck do we _look_ like?" V says—the first she's spoken in several weeks.

The clerk turns, glaring—then sees them, pales, and waves them past.

* * *

Something has to break. V sleeps little, eats less. More and more every day he sees the wolf pulling at her seams. Badly human, V begins to forget—little things, but important, no doubt hard-fought habits she learned in the vault.

She barely speaks. She stops blinking. Each gesture carries the suggestion of a knife, inhumanly fast, darting little strikes against the sky. Brotherhood of Steel does not like her, but they too have walked her road of shells spent from Underworld to Seward Square. They give her a wide berth. She goes where she wants.

So when V holes up in the wreckage of the library—builds a fortress in nonfiction between 390 and 500—Charon is not surprised. He sits with his back to the shelves, dodges the occasional book she sends flying out overhead and waits.

It takes time, but V emerges. She kicks down a shelf, rises dark-eyed from the wreckage with a book in one hand and his contract clenched in the other.

Charon's blood runs cold. Slowly, he stands.

" _Kharon Trinadtsat,"_ she snarls.

And though her accent is bad, he feels his name like a blow to the stomach, like a nightmare boiling from the ash.

V chokes. Her voice breaks.

"It's not a name," she says, shaking his contract. A badly singed Russian dictionary drops from her hand, sprawls open on the floor. "It's not a name; it's a _designation_."

And he wants to argue, wants to strike, to fight—to _comfort her_ , somehow, though she has taken a sledgehammer to his history, stolen his past, upended the peace between them—and a blinding fury swallows him.

Charon wants to shoot. He wants to strike. His vision narrows until Charon sees only her, clutching his contract, hip-deep in her own rubble. He feels fire burning down his sides. Hundreds of old bullet wounds scream, agonizing lead-worm trails through his rotten hide, and so many of these wounds have been hers—taken _for_ her, in service of her—and even after all he's done, after all he's _given her_ , she would still find a way to _take_.

V looks at him, waiting, _wanting—_ but she is not wrong.

Charon stands and says nothing.

Slowly, V sinks. She crumples against the edge of a shelf, curls, presses her face into her knees.

Charon hears Brahms, smells smoke from an old memory, phantom pain from a litany of scars. Still, he stands.

He watches her, jaw taut, and says nothing.

Waiting for orders.

As is his _function_ —a weapon, a machine, a _designation_.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have, I know. I just… I needed _something_."

And Charon _burns_ , but watching her—his employer curled on the floor, her body bent around his contract, around his _name_ … suddenly Charon sees her as she is.

Barely grown, lost and monstrous, with only him.

Slowly, his fires bank. His vision clears.

He is a poor substitute for companionship, but Charon thinks he is the only one who understands her. He is the only one who has never feared her.

He suspects this is more than V has ever hoped for.

 _"Never Again_ ," he growls. A small cruelty, but Charon wants his bloodied history paid in kind. There is nothing in his contract that says he may ask questions, but then, there is nothing in his contract to forbid it. "Your gun. What does it mean?"

V curls closer into her knees, heedless of the dried gore flaking against her cheek.

"My father. Almodovar. Moriarity. Mack. Bullies. Puppeteers. I won't be party to it again. I won't…" she chokes again and Charon realizes she is crying, quietly, tears streaming down her face. "When my father left, I woke up in the vault with all the guards after me. They had orders to shoot to kill. But it was Almodovar who found me. I was in his office, just trying to find the password for the door. He pointed that 10mm at my head—a man who knew me my entire life—and said he was _done hunting monsters_."

She swallows, does not look at him, stares fixedly at the piles of books.

"I broke the gun. I took it and I tore it apart in front of him and I realized that if I wanted, I could have put my fist through his chest."

V sucks in a deep breath. He sees her hands shaking, around her knees. "Whatever he says, my father _built_ me. But everything he gave me… it's not for survival; it's for _war._ I look around and everybody's so goddamn fragile. Paper. And I can fix it. What's broken. I can put things the way they should be—like Big Town— _I_ can do that. I can _choose_ to do that, instead of… But when do you stop?" she looks up, looks at him as though he can answer her—as though he has ever known. "When do you cross the line in the sand?"

Slowly, aching, Charon moves to crouch at her side.

"You are not Azhrukhal," he says. And then, because he knows her, because he _understands_ , "You are monstrous. But on your blackest day, you will never come close to being the person he was. You cannot. Mistress— _V_ —you _are_ the line."

She looks up at him, full of hope and trust, and seeing her, Charon thinks he understands what it means to choose.

"You are a force of nature," he tells her. "You are consequence."

"What if you're wrong?" she whispers. "What if we're both broken?"

And Charon is certain he is broken. He was broken over two-hundred times, over two-hundred years, shattered and remolded into the shape his handlers desired, but he knows—in his bones, he knows—that his employer is blindingly _whole_.

But Charon is not a man for words. He cannot tell her this; he does not know how.

"I will follow you, regardless," he says instead—he hopes she understands—and offers her a hand up from the ground.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 13

* * *

After months spent purging downtown DC, their reputation reaches Rivet City long before they do. They crest the gangway to find the bridge already extended, and when they cross, the guard waiting at the other end holsters his weapon, touches two fingers to his brow.

"Welcome to Rivet City," he tells them. "Honored to have you on my boat."

V mumbles her thanks, avoids the man's eyes. She walks as close to Charon as she can without tripping on his feet.

Remembering Big Town, the crush of tiny bodies and too much noise, Charon steers her away from the Marketplace, chooses a different door. This one leads to a quiet stairwell, filled with signs. At his side, he feels V breathe.

"Muddy Rudder," she reads. "Sounds like a dive. Think it has rooms?"

They head down and inside, descend yet more stairs, picking their way towards the bar. Being taller, Charon sees the boy before she does—leather jacket, vault suit reinforced, patched, stained—hunched over a bottle of something at the bar. Before he can warn her, before he can figure out _how_ , V freezes.

"Butch," she breathes.

At the sound of his name, the boy turns. Seeing V, every line of his body pulls taut, then stills. Slowly, he rises, walks to her like creeping up on yao-guai.

Despite her gore, he holds his arms open. V falls into him like a lifeline.

And Charon does not like the boy. He _does_ _not_. But for this, if nothing else, Charon respects him.

"You need a bath, V," Charon hears him whisper into her hair. "And then you need to lie the fuck down. You look like shit and smell worse. Goddamn, baby-doll. Did you really just carve a road through DC?"

Though her voice shakes, V laughs. "What are you doing here?" she asks, pulling away. "I thought you'd go to Megaton."

Butch shrugs. "My dad talked about this place. I wanted to see it." With skill of obvious practice, he changes the subject, shifts his body like turning a page. "Listen, I've got a room. Running water and everything. You guys are welcome to it. And I mean seriously soon. I don't know who smells worse, you or the ghoul."

V's smile is immediate and all gratitude. Still, she forces a frown, punches the boy's shoulder on his behalf. "Don't fuck with Charon."

Butch rolls his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. I know." Rubbing his arm, he gestures for the door, steps gingerly past Charon and leads the way out. "Couple of big damn heroes, both of you. My rep'll be ruined, anybody sees me hanging out with you."

* * *

In the room, V drops her pack, busies herself rearranging ammo and will not meet his eyes.

"You go first," she says to her hands. "I owe you one."

Unexpected, the words strike like a blow and turn his stomach. Charon swallows. Looking at V, her head bent over her pack, shy and sad—for a moment, he cannot breathe.

_I owe you one._

Charon is not a man for words. He does not understand why these few strike him so, does not know why they rot in his gut—only knows that they are _wrong_.

If she had not purchased his contract… Without her…

She stole his name from an old book, true, took what he would not give. But to _owe_ …

At his silence, V stops digging in her pack and turns. "Charon?" she asks quietly.

When V looks at him, she does not see a weapon. She sees a partner… an _equal_.

" _My friend_ ," she'd called him, placing herself between his body and the barrel of a gun.

She is not—she will _never_ be—the one who owes _._

But, like so many other things, Charon does not have the words for this. He says instead, "As you wish."

And for the first time in four months, Charon leaves her side.

* * *

He scrubs down as quickly as he is able. Which, considering the filth caked between the two of them, isn't much. He fills the tub twice before the water runs clear when it falls over his back. His armor he leaves in a huddle by the door, dons a clean change of clothes from his pack. The armor will have to be soaked in the bay—too many dried entrails will clog the drain.

When finally, Charon emerges from the bathroom, padding barefoot into the room with boots in hand, he hears Butch tell V, "Your dad was here, you know. Wasn't happy to see me when I showed up, let me tell you. First thing he asked me, _what are you doing here?_ Second thing he asked me, _where's Veronica_? Like I've got time to go goody two-shoes'n it around the wastes after you."

"Oh yeah, what _do_ you got time for?" she snorts, but softens. "You have clients here?"

The boy shrugs, dips his head.

"Yeah. Business is good. I make the rent; I eat. I mean, I actually _eat,_ V. No rations, no… no _Mom,_ you know? I eat." Butch looks down at his hands, rubs a thumb down the lines of his palm. "Heard he's down in that Memorial place. The one with all the pipes. You gonna talk to him?"

Watching the two of them, Charon finds he envies Butch's talent with meaningless chatter, the easy way they carry two conversations at once, when he and V can barely manage one.

Still, when he sits at the table beside her to lace up his boots, despite his silence, V smiles at him. Her fingers creep towards his elbow, stop just shy of touching.

"Look at you all shiny new," she says quietly. And then, to Butch, "My dad can fuck himself. You, though—you're good?"

"I'm good, V. I'm so good I'm golden." Butch shakes his head, grins. "Now get your ass in the water already, woman. You're stinkin' up the place."

V makes a face, pushing up from the table. "Yeah, yeah, I'm going."

"An' if you're lucky—not that I'm not breaking my back for you already, mind—I'll fix that rat's nest you call hair."

From inside the bathroom, V laughs, small and startled, as though she hadn't meant to, and Charon finds, to his surprise, he does not so much _dislike_ the boy. Whatever he says, Butch respects V. Their insults, their arguments—they fight like family.

Charon thinks V needs a family. She… should have someone. Deserves someone.

Still, when Butch shifts and fidgets, alone in the room with him, Charon does nothing to alleviate his discomfort. He only watches him, counting time in his head.

To give the boy credit, it takes five minutes before he breaks.

"I'm gonna go get food," he says. "I'll be back. Do whatever, just don't wreck the place."

Charon snorts as the door closes, busies himself sorting through their packs. He has known people to last longer, alone with him—but only two. Even Azhrukhal, safe as kittens behind his contract, would not remain in his company more than three minutes after closing.

Listening to the bathtub empty and fill in the next room, listening to V humming fragments of songs he hasn't heard in a hundred years, Charon believes her trust is not misplaced.

He doesn't like the boy, no. But he likes him better than most.

* * *

When Butch returns, he brings back enough food for an entire caravan, comes in balancing a crate on his shoulder, three Nuka-colas dangling from the fingers of his free hand. Inside the box, mirelurk cakes and bowls of meat sit stacked on boxes of InstaMash and potato chips, sideways beer bottles rattling in the spaces between.

V laughs, toweling water from her hair. She sits down next to Charon, close enough to smell her soap, the stale long-packed scent of her fresh clothes.

Immediately, without quite intending to, he feels better. His jangling nerves settle. The vicious knots of tension between his shoulders ease. V feels like a piece slotting back into place, a warm gun at his side and a round in the chamber.

"You think you brought enough?" she asks Butch.

Butch snorts. "Knowing you?" he asks, drops the crate on the table beside the dismantled contents of their packs. Charon leans forward, sweeps an armful of ammo boxes aside to make room.

V grins, all teeth. "You saying I'm fat, Deloria?"

"I'm saying I want you full-up and happy before I come near you with a razor."

V laughs again. Charon shifts the piles a little further down, pulls two beers from the box, wondering how long it's been since she laughed, how long since she spoke this much at all. Months, he thinks. Not since Megaton, drunk and avoiding her demons, howling bar songs and using his shoulder for balance.

"Smart man," she says to Butch, takes the beer Charon offers her. And then, picking up a box from the table. "We don't have a .44."

Charon shrugs. "Needed the box."

"Holy shit," Butch snorts. "So you _do_ talk."

Charon rolls his eyes, takes the plate of mirelurk cakes the boy hands him and another for V. When he turns, he finds her standing too-still, wary.

"Butch," she warns.

"Aw, lay off, V. We're cool," Butch says, tosses snack cakes and potato chips down like a dealer and drops into the remaining chair to eat. "I'm too pretty to shoot."

V glances at Charon first, searching his face. And though he is built for fire and war, today, whatever she reads there soothes her.

She relaxes, sinks into a chair at his side. "Yeah," she says, smiles. "It's the right hook you gotta watch out for."

"Hey, you laugh, but I bet he's never clocked _you_ one. The man's got a mean punch! I'm missing teeth!"

"Tooth," Charon says, sending a box of InstaMash down the table. "One."

V grins. Her fingers brush his, curl beneath his palm. "Sarcasm! I like it."

Butch groans. "Aw, what, now I'm getting it from you, too? Jesus. You are a bad influence on this guy, V."

" _Me_? I'll have you know I am a paragon of virtue."

"Ha! He probably had _skin_ when you met. Probably went around preaching peace and picking flowers."

"Hey," V protests, pouring water over her dehydrated potatoes and his, too. "The day we met, Charon shot a guy in the head."

"Yeah, my point exactly. You ruined him, V. He's a goner." Looking at Charon, Butch shakes his head. "Sorry, man. You're done for. You're in too deep."

Charon snorts. Beside him, V laughs. Butch grins, shrugs. "What? It's true."

And sitting between the two of them, sharing food and beer—listening to them talk—oddly enough... Charon believes the boy is not wrong.

He remembers Grayditch, barely two months into his employment, sitting on a broken couch with V at his side, boots up, beer in hand. He remembers the yao-guai, following her into a den of monsters with his weapon holstered. He remembers the gas station, her joy over a can of fruit, his own unexpected comfort.

He remembers Arefu, the two of them less than sober, struggling to haul a mattress onto the roof. Remembers V losing her grip, riding it over the side of the house like a child on a sled—his heart in his throat, a clear-headed instant of panic—and her laughing, laughing on her ass against the wall of the overpass, calling up, " _We're okay, the whiskey didn't break!_ "

He remembers waking up on that rooftop to a mouth full of her hair. Remembers a morning spent listening to her snore, watching the river for lack of other orders. Watching the river because he _chose to._

And Charon is not… He is not unhappy.

"You are not _ironing_ my hair," he hears V protest beside him. "Just shave it off, carve a design in it or something."

"What, and send you out into the wastes _bald_? Over my dead body. I've got a reputation to protect!"

Charon remembers the woman who stared down Azhrukhal, who hooked an arm through his and carried him out of Underworld without a backward glance. A year ago, he thinks, he could never have imagined this.

Given a lifetime—given two—he could never have imagined _her_.

He is not unhappy.

And Butch is not wrong.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 14

* * *

"The Weatherly has rooms," Butch tells them, down to two bottles of Nuka-cola and crumbs littering the table. "Expensive though. I know where we could swipe a mattress if you guys wanna crash here."

Sucking two-hundred year old chocolate from her thumb, V smiles.

* * *

They make an odd party—a war-battered woman, a pretty-boy barber, and an enormous ghoul—wrestling a graying twin mattress through the halls of Rivet City. They catch a few stares, but though guards pass through, they all touch fingers above their eyes in quiet respect.

One stops them to say, "Caravans are coming regular now," her heart thick in her throat. "My girl was sick, but Doc Hoff—the caravans got through. _Thank you_."

V does not know what to say—freezes like an old-world rabbit in the spotlight—but the guard moves on without waiting for a reply and Butch leans forward, whispering, "See—couple of big damn heroes," to break the moment.

He spends the rest of the return trip complaining about his ruined reputation until he has V smiling again, reaching around the mattress to swat him in the arm.

Family, Charon thinks, and finds himself grateful.

* * *

They set the mattress down in the near corner of the room, sharing the wall with the door and a clear line of sight. Long familiar with each other, Charon and V undress without a word, settle in with backs touching, guns near at hand. Butch rolls into bed and slaps off the lamp.

Quietly, V kicks him in the ankle. "No boots in bed," she whispers.

Charon rolls his eyes, but toes his boots off anyway. Though he cannot see her face, he feels V smile.

"Thank you," she says. Not long after, her breathing slows, evens.

It takes Charon somewhat longer—Butch shifts, kicking, mumbling, the sounds jarring and unfamiliar in the dark—but V settles him, her heat at his back a solid comfort.

Eventually, Charon sleeps, too.

* * *

He wakes hours later at a knock on the door, certain he has dreamed, but does not remember what. He smells no smoke, hears only the ship stirring around them. For once, his bones do not hurt. He feels warm and slow. Not an old battle, then. Strange.

Whoever stands outside the door knocks again. Butch groans.

"Too goddamned early for a haircut," he says. "V, you get it," and pulls a pillow over his head.

At Charon's side, eyes still closed, V frowns.

"No, fuck you," she grunts and rolls over, curling into him. Her hand flattens against his stomach. He feels her nose, cool, pressing into his shoulder.

The knocking continues, but V does not stir again. Considering the last four months, Charon is not surprised. He surprises himself, though, not wanting to get up—by _wanting_ at all, much less something so simple as a warm bed.

But V has not slept properly in weeks, and Charon eases out of bed so as not to wake her. He rolls to his feet, scoops up his shotgun on the way, and goes to open the door.

Outside, the courier doesn't even flinch at the sight of him—a six-foot-something ghoul with a shotgun, freshly woken and pretty close to pissed. Evidentially, the man has some practice at his job.

"You're Charon, right?" he says and hands over a holotape. "Good. Message for V."

Charon takes the tape, turns it over in his hands. The casing is whole and undamaged. As far as he can discern, it has not been tampered with—no explosives or poisons—as safe as its audible contents. He nods to the courier and closes the door.

He finds V still asleep when he glances back, curled into the warm divot his body left. Quietly as he is able, Charon takes his boots from the bedside. He sits down at the table, spreads out their cloth for cleaning guns.

It will not, he thinks, be a short wait.

* * *

A few hours later, Butch wakes, bleary-eyed, hair stuck flat to his head. He looks older without the leather jacket, with circles under his eyes and his face still swollen with sleep.

"What's that?" he asks, pointing his chin at the tape on the table.

"For V," Charon says.

Butch nods. He scratches his neck and stretches, watching V. "Wow, she's really down for the count. Huh. You hungry?" he climbs out of bed, pulls on his boots without bothering to lace them. "I'll grab something."

Reaching into his pack, Charon tosses the boy one of V's bags of caps, each carefully measured to 100 each. Butch catches it neatly, opens the bag and whistles.

It is too much, but V is sleeping soundly for the first time in four months—easy in this boy's company, something like herself again—and Charon is grateful.

"Fuck, you're hungry," Butch laughs, but through the bravado Charon sees something quieter in his eyes. Despite their differences, Butch understands. "Alright, then," he says. "I'm gone," and careful not to wake V, slips from the room like a ghost.

* * *

Near evening, the two of them alone in the room, V finally wakes. She staggers bleary-eyed into the bathroom and out again, drops into a chair at the table. Without a word, Charon hands her something to eat.

"Had a dream," she tells him, cracking open the can of Cram. "Big Town."

Fingers trailing the pieces of a broken gun, Charon thinks of his own dream, hazy and gentle—the first of its kind in many years. He feels the memory of V's hand pressed flat against his stomach, her heat against his side.

Charon shrugs. He concentrates on his work, wonders if she will let him clean _Never Again_.

"Message for you," he tells her.

V pauses, bent spoon halfway to her lips. "From who?"

Charon shrugs again. He fixes his attention on the gun beneath his hands. Still, when V puts the tape into her Pip-boy, he cannot help but watch her, stealing glances at her face like sips of water.

Crackling, her father's voice fills the room. " _Veronica, thank you. I know we've had our differences, but you risked a lot, clearing out the Jefferson Memorial—clearing out DC, if the radio can be believed—and now, thanks to you, Project Purity can finally move forward. Thank you, sweetheart. I just want you to know—"_

V pulls the tape from her Pip-boy. Gently, she lays it on the table and smashes it to dust with the flat of her palm.

"Fuck you, Dad," she says, sounding almost calm. "I'm going back to bed."

Abandoning the half-eaten can of Cram, V crosses the room and drops back into the mattress. Charon waits for a moment before leaning forward, sweeping the bits of tape into the trash and away from his cleaning station. Though her back is to him, V notices. She turns, grimaces, "Sorry."

Charon shrugs. He returns to his work, hoping the remnants of her father's voice will dissipate without the tape to hold them, hoping it will not haunt her as the vault did.

Quietly, V offers, "You can explore the ship if you want. I know I'm not good company."

Charon shakes his head, mouth tight. "My place is at your side," he tells her.

V catches the admonishment, such as it is. She smiles. From the corner of his eye, he sees her shoulders ease. "Relax, Charon," she says. "I'm not sending you away. Just… You do what you want, okay? If you get bored, don't feel like you have to stay and watch me snore."

The entirety of their conversation sits uneasy in his stomach—feels too much like _I owe you one_ —and Charon shifts in his seat, massages an old bullet wound in his thigh.

"You can… you can do that can't you?" V asks, voice low, searching. "You can make choices like that?"

Charon purses his lips. He shrugs, tries to bypass the question through his silence, but V props herself on one elbow to look at him. She does not press, only watches, her eyes on his fingers as he turns springs and triggers over in his hands. At last, somewhat against his will, Charon considers it.

"It is within my capability," he decides at last.

V nods. She curls up, carefully, on her side of the bed.

Before long, he joins her.

They don't speak. They don't need to.

* * *

They have money for their own room in Rivet City—more than enough—but Butch does not complain and V finds his proximity a comfort. One day turns into two, then three, then a week.

"He makes me feel human," she tells Charon, when Butch leaves again to do whatever it is he does with his days. "But he doesn't make me feel like I have to be."

Four months ago, fresh from salvaging the vault, Charon thinks her admittance may have bothered him. But he understands their bickering, two-headed conversations now and sees the certain sort of care Butch takes around her.

They fall into a different pattern; something easier, softer. V spends every night with her back pressed flush to his, close enough to feel her heartbeat through her skin—spends every day locked in step with him. People want to speak to her. Some offer her things; food, gifts, whatever they can spare. Others have walked her road of shells. Still others want something from her.

Charon learns to distinguish between them, to gauge V's patience by her mood. When her shoulders bow, when her fingers graze his wrist, Charon steps around her, warns any on-comers away with a heavy gaze.

Butch laughs about it at his place, over food from the cantina.

"You should hear how they talk about the two of you out there, V. Like you're not some snot-nosed kid from the vault," he says. And then, eyeing her plate. "You gonna eat that?"

V brings an arm down around her food. "What're they saying?" she asks. "And fuck yeah, I'm eating it. I'm eating yours, too, you eat any slower."

"Keep your mitts off my food, woman." Butch grins, makes a few playful jabs at her hand with his fork. "They're calling you the Saint of the Wastes. Can you believe that?"

V falters. "What about Charon?"

Butch shrugs. "What about him?" And then, stabbing a sausage from her plate, "Ha! Don't give me that look; you were killing it, not eating it."

V does not move. She holds herself like a weapon, like a trap ready to break. Insists, "What do they call Charon?"

Butch frowns. For the first time, his eyes dart away. He shrugs again. "Most people just call him Death. You know, like those apocalypse guys. You're War and he's Death."

V's shoulders bow. She stares down at her plate, fingers tight around her fork, lips pursed knife-thin. Very gently, Charon brushes her wrist.

"It is intended as an honor," he murmurs.

Butch looks between them. He senses the low danger here, bad wiring in high water, but wades in just the same. "Yeah, V. Come on, lighten up. You're out there kicking ass and taking names. People like it."

V sighs. Her fork drops. "I know."

"So what's got your panties in a bunch?"

V's eyes fall on their packs, loaded and ready beside the mattress. She looks at Charon, finds his eyes.

"We should head back to Big Town."

* * *

Charon understands they are fleeing from Rivet City, the crushing weight of Never Again suddenly too much to bear. But he follows where she leads.

He will always follow where she leads.

* * *

Camped in a defensible corner of Farragut West, Charon sits up, keeping watch. V lies beside him, spread out and staring at the ceiling, one arm draped lazily over his outstretched leg.

"If I'm War and you're Death," she says, the first she's spoken since Rivet City, "Then who are Famine and Plague?"

Charon looks down. He expects he will find her sad and distant, _Never Again_ a sleeping monster behind her eyes. But V smiles up at him from his hip, taps a rhythm against his calf.

"Enclave?" he offers.

V hums. "Can they be both?"

Charon shrugs. Dust falls in a trickle from the ceiling—something passing aboveground, overhead. He scans the area out of habit, glances down for any sign of red on V's Pip-boy screen, but the metro remains quiet.

"I think they're Famine," V murmurs. "Maybe raiders are Plague. Slavers, too. Talon Company. It has a nice symmetry. A plague of man."

She smiles again, her eyes bright in the near dark. And looking at her, suddenly, Charon cannot imagine his life without her. Though he has known her for little more than eight months, V has become somehow _necessary_.

Charon swallows, overwhelmed, feeling her fingers like a fire through his armor, a pressure against his name.

V is, by his contract, his employer. But she does not treat him as any employer ever has, lying at his side in the dust of an old subway. He does not feel _bound._

With her, his contract takes on an inherent beauty, a purity of intention it never had before— _could_ never have—conceived in war, for death.

But now, she is his War. And he will fight for her until the end of days.

Charon finds the concept a comfort. A strength.

"I think we should take Wadsworth to Big Town," she says. "Unless purifiers are standard issue in Gutsy models?"

Charon changes his grip on his gun, shifts, ends up closer, his hip against her shoulder. "They are," he tells her.

"We could find another one, then. We could fix it?"

Quietly, scanning for hostiles, he agrees. V smiles.

For some time, they fall into an easy silence. Until, at last, V murmurs, "Hey, Charon? Proud of you."

Charon feels his chest constrict. He swallows, rolls his shoulders to loosen the cramping muscles, but the fist around his heart will not unclench.

He does not know what to say, but when he looks down, he finds V already slipped into an unsteady doze.

Proud of _him_.

 _Proud_ of him.

Very carefully, he reaches down and brushes the hair from her face.

V smiles in her sleep.

It is enough.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 15

* * *

Though he does not remember the name, Charon remembers the location of an old military base to the north. He plants a tiny flag on the screen of V's Pip-boy, her metal gauntlet sun-warm through his glove.

And they walk.

The building suffered a direct hit in the war. The hazy gray corridors of his memory are gone, cracked open on the pavement like a spoiled egg. Raiders crawl through the wreckage, human maggots picking at a corpse. After four months in downtown DC, even their numbers are nothing. Charon looks at V, catches her smiling at him.

" _Tourist,"_ she mouths, laughing silently.

Charon shrugs. Still, he feels warm. Warm and quiet like Rivet City, perched atop the wreckage of the old world, his gun in his hands and V beside him.

 _Crossfire,_ he signs, makes it a question with the tilt of his head.

V nods, gives him a thumbs-up. Quiet as ghosts, they choose opposite sides of the wreckage, creep around until together they block the only easy exits into the Wastes.

Across the yard, V signs, _Go_.

They work their way through the base like sightseers, easy threats and easy patterns, worry stone smooth and simple.

Charon shoots anything that moves.

He finds it immensely satisfying.

* * *

In the back of a heavy transport TP-81, they find several crates—ammo, MREs, spare Gutsy parts, jumbled together and poorly labeled. A last attempt to flee the compound, Charon thinks. Upper management abandoning their post, but with no field experience and little idea what they'd need.

"I can't make heads or tails of this," V says, nudging a crate with her boot. "I'll take watch. You find what we need."

So Charon does. V hoists herself onto the roof of the TP-81's cabin, flattens to her belly with her gun tight against her shoulder.

He picks through the crates, sorting parts, following the memory of an old schematic. And once, he'd been drilled on this. Once, he'd been able to build or disassemble a Gutsy in ten minutes flat, regardless of circumstance. Today, he turns dusty pieces over in his hands, feeling in equal measure the weight of old training and the pressure of V's fingers on his name.

The list of things V will never ask of him, Charon thinks, is nearly as long as the list of what he has been trained to provide.

Because he can—because he has not been given orders otherwise—Charon takes his time. He fills a box with the parts he will need to build a Gutsy, splits the GREs between his pack and V's. He checks twice to make sure he has not missed anything important. At last, confident he has collected everything they will need, he secures the crate and reaches up to tap V's ankle.

She grins, looking over her shoulder at him. "We good?"

Charon nods, thinking yes, for the first time in fifteen years—in two hundred years—with her, he is good.

* * *

This time, approaching the Big Town bridge, the barely-grown man at the opposite end grins to see them, a sentry bot idling at his side and his hands positioned properly on his gun.

"You're back," he says. "I mean, not that we ever doubted you, but wow. You're back."

Purple still rings the boy's eyes, but lighter, less sore. He is sleeping, Charon thinks. He holds his gun like another limb, an extension of himself. V taught him that. Taught him to shoot, to set traps—taught him how to sleep again, without eyes on the horizon, without fear.

In the Wasteland, peace of mind is a rare gift. Yet, his employer wanders, dealing out peace like a factory, in food and sleep and lead, as though it is nothing. As though it is… _expected._ Owed.

At his side, V smiles, light and pleased, and Charon is struck again by this woman—by the sheer fact of her—and he does not… She walked into the Ninth Circle with intent. Hunting. Hunting for weakness, for Azhrukhal, for _him._ A bloody whirlwind, a terror, she chews through the world, destroys _everything_ that does not suit her.

The Wasteland names her their saint. In the same breath, they name her War.

Charon has never known anyone like her.

It occurs to him, for the first time, to wonder _why_ she purchased his contract.

"We brought Big Town a present," she says. "Some assembly required. We're just going to duck inside and set it up."

The boy laughs, shrugs. "Sure, yeah. Whatever you want, V. After everything you've done, you practically own the place."

V's humor doesn't fade, but Charon sees the wolf in her eyes, quiet. She says, "I just want you safe."

* * *

Lifting the box between them, they return to the house they used before. Slats of broken, nail-eaten wood still dangle from the door, framing Charon's boot-print. V smiles to see it, steps inside trailing the fingers of her free hand along the outline. Charon wonders at her reverence. With the tilt of his head, he asks a question, but V shrugs.

"Long time ago," she says. "Feels like history now."

They deposit the box at the edge of the mattress and Charon surveys the room. While close to the town border, the house is not indefensible. In fact, strips of light between the window boards provide a clear line of sight beyond the bridge. From here, from _cover,_ the town could be defended. Yet, judging by the dust on the floor, the remnants of V's blood and river mud still flaking the mattress, no one has entered this house in their absence.

Though the nights are growing cooler, V strips out of her armor and drops onto the mattress. Quietly, Charon joins her. Sitting at her side, he unloads parts from the crate, filling the space between them with a catalogue of screws and springs and small armaments. She watches as he works without a word, her eyes on his hands as he fits parts together and he feels her gaze like a weight on his skin, like fingers tracing his name, but Charon takes his time.

Because he can. Because he has not been ordered otherwise. Because V _will not_ order otherwise.

Charon takes a full ten minutes to assemble the arms. Another five for the propulsion system. Seven for the chassis.

His long dead superiors would have been disgusted. But at his side, his employer only smiles.

"Rocket science," she says. "I like it."

Charon wires up the fission battery, enters a complicated series of override codes directly into the command console, rewriting old programming with a blank slate. And then, faced with the empty, blinking cursor, he stops.

He… can write the programming. Technically. He is capable of it.

But Charon finds he does not… he does not _want_ to.

He glances at V, looking for an order, for direction, but still, his employer only smiles. "My turn? I can do the rest. I'm okay at hacking."

So simple. As though it is a given. As though his contract allows him choice.

Just the same, Charon nods. He shifts the machine so she can reach it, watches her connect it to her Pip-boy and type away.

She could have ordered him. She did not.

Charon rolls his shoulders, cracks his back, tries to work out the sinking tension between his shoulder blades. After a few moments, he stands, paces the room, stretches.

V finishes, turns the screen his way.

"You think this looks okay?"

And Charon knows it to be a superfluous gesture, but one he appreciates. His employer trusts his insight, his judgment, though Charon knows before he looks there will be nothing to correct. The Gutsy starts as it has been intended to, thrusters engaging in sequence, lifting it upright again.

"Unit Q-8678 reporting!" it barks. "Assignment: Big Town. Function: Protect and serve! Hoo-ah!"

V laughs. Leaning back on her hands, she grins up at him, mischief in her eyes. "I think we should paint it pink."


	16. Chapter Sixteen

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 16

* * *

Despite V's best efforts to locate any kind of paint in the houses around Big Town, the Gutsy remains green. At last she shrugs, dirt streaked across her cheek, and brings the machine to Red.

When the door to the clinic opens, Red jumps up from her seat at a computer terminal. By habit, she grabs the bag at her elbow, and Charon sees strength in her stance, a confidence in her movements she did not carry before—another gift V left behind.

"What happened?" Red starts. And then, spotting them, "Oh god, V! Are you hurt?"

V laughs, holds out her hands. "Visiting," she says.

Immediately, the doctor relaxes. "Good. Any kind of damage _you'd_ walk in with, I'm not sure I could fix," she says. And then, with a sneaky grin, "Three Dog talks about you on the radio. You've been busy."

V snorts. "Lies. All lies," she says and the doctor laughs.

"Oh yeah? Like rescuing us from Big Town?"

"Exactly like that." Grinning, she steps a little further into the room. "Look. I brought you a new robot."

"Thank you! That's great. We can always use more guns."

Buzzing with excitement, V springs around the robot's side, more like herself than Charon has seen in months—like Grayditch, punting ants through doorways and calling points; like Jocko's Gas Stop, grease streaked war-paint and two arms around a motorcycle.

"Yeah, but check this out," she says. "Open up its head. There's a built-in water purifier in there. You hardly have to do a thing; just clean the waste unit every couple of months."

Red stiffens. Charon reads surprise in her face. Her eyes shine. Slowly, stricken, staring at the machine, the doctor presses a hand to her mouth. For a long moment, she does not move.

V's smile fades. She shifts her weight. "He's not as good as an Auto-Doc, but he has basic some coding as a field medic. He can stabilize a patient. Sterilize tools."

Red swallows.

"We can't pay you for this," she manages, very quietly, her voice like sand. "But I have a feeling you're not asking us to."

V shakes her head. Her eyes dart away. "It's a gift."

"V," Red breathes. But looking up, meeting her eyes, she does not know what else to say.

V shrugs, turns her whole body away from the unasked question, dodging like a blow, and Charon has seen the movement before from the Deloria boy. It looks odd on her, sits poorly, her ill-fitting sheepskin slipping at the seams.

"How have things been?" V asks instead. "Have you guys been okay?"

The doctor nods. She swallows again, lifts her glasses to pass a hand over her eyes. "We've been okay. Thanks to you. We're not scared anymore."

V hums. "Still too skinny."

Fragile as a soap bubble, the tension shatters. Red laughs. "Well, we wouldn't want to outgrow our very fashionable attire, would we?" she says. Then, seeing V's face, she sobers. "We're doing better, V. We scavenge a little farther out now—found a _bunch_ in the police station. And we can hunt. Shorty got a mole rat last week."

As always, V hears what goes unsaid. "The traders don't come through?"

Red shrugs. This time, she turns away, looking like the woman-child hiding in the corner of a cage. "They go to Paradise Falls. We don't… we pretend like we're not here if the caravans come too close. We're nesting molerats over here; we don't want to advertise to slavers, you know."

"Paradise Falls," V repeats and the wolf is naked in her eyes, head high and scenting.

"Yeah. All of 'em but Crazy Wolfgang. He's okay. Sometimes we catch him down by Megaton, if we've got the ammo to head that way."

Slowly, V nods, returning to his side. "I understand. I'll see what I can do."

Though there is little humor in it, Red chuckles. "Jeeze, V. You've done so much already. I mean, I wouldn't even _be_ here if it weren't for you." And then, the truth of the situation catches up and quietly, she adds, "I think most of us would be gone by now, if not for you."

Out of habit, Charon thinks, V shifts a little closer to him. She does not know what to say in the face of the doctor's admission and uncomfortable, her fingers find his wrist.

Red does not notice. Instead, she smiles, says, "I'll keep the Gutsy in the clinic basement. If people know you can get clean water out of that…" she offers a rueful smile, shrugs. "I don't think we've got the guns, you know?"

V's face hardens, resolute.

She says, "I'll get you the guns."

* * *

Once outside, V heads immediately for the bridge. Charon catches her sleeve, tugs her back. From his pack, he takes an MRE. And he has not—He has never _suggested_ to an employer before, never offered unprompted solutions, but V…

He knows she will not mind. He thinks, perhaps, she may… appreciate it.

"We have thirty one," he says, gesturing between her pack and his. "We can leave them behind."

V frowns. "Bricks?" she asks, taking the silver packet from him. "I mean, I saw you put them in, but… bricks?"

Charon blinks. She gave him an order once, early on, to put useful things into her pack that he could not carry in his own. And she had seen him, loading up their bags. She had watched him do so. And yet, even thinking they were bricks, she had carried them.

Because he had put them there.

Because, in a way, he had asked her to.

Rolling his shoulders to work away a sudden cramp, Charon shrugs.

"Stable rations," he says, though his chest feels oddly like a vice. At her blank look, he adds, "Food."

"This is food?"

V turns the packet over in her hands, picking at the plastic, the label too worn to read. Carefully, she opens it away from her body and passes it beneath the sensor on her Pip-boy. When her cufflink fails to signal radiation, she sniffs it, nibbles a corner and grimaces.

"Is it supposed to taste like that?" she asks, nose wrinkled, holding it out to him.

Charon pulls off a piece. It tastes of smoke, of Brahms and heavy fire and blood between his teeth. But then, to him, MREs always have. Charon shrugs. They were made to last indefinitely. He assumes they did.

Staring at the packet, at him, at her hands, V shakes her head.

"The world hasn't changed much at all, has it?" she murmurs. In her eyes, he sees a quiet pain, old and badly healed. "In the vault, history was always some kind of shining beacon to the past. But all this… the Wasteland isn't any different for you, is it? You've always lived like this; we're just now catching up."

Charon would sooner sell his contract to Azhrukhal again than revisit the wreckage of his past. He shrugs, jaw tight, but when he turns away, V's fingers catch on his elbow, curl beneath the strap of his bracer and draw him back again.

She understands. He reads it in her face, in the line of her body, in the whisper of _Never Again_.

She is not asking for an answer. This is no crowbar to his history—only a window to her own.

Charon nods. Sadly, V smiles. Her fingers flit away.

"We'll leave the food bricks," she says. "Let's go get some guns."

* * *

They follow the path V walked alone four months ago while Charon stood back to guard the bridge. Today, he sticks tight to her side, mindful of Paradise Falls in the nearby distance. But V leads them well out of sight. She walks with purpose, slipping in and out of familiar shadows, and Charon knows she has done this many times before.

At last, their destination becomes clear. V heads for the underside of a cliff littered with rubble. Had Charon not been trained in tracking, it may have looked like a landslide. But he sees the mark of human hands in the dirt, a scuffed edge of V's boot print amongst the tangle of rocks and dead trees.

Quietly, with speed of practice, V dismantles a small path between two burnt out logs and slips between them. Charon ducks after her, lifts the blockade back into place, and follows her through the chain-link gate.

Inside, V relaxes. Her fingers drift away from the butt of her carbine, trail along the metal railings like an old habit, a ritual.

She lived here once, Charon thinks, and the thought unsettles him.

When she purchased his contract, all sharp angles and mean lines, Charon had expected something like Tenpenny Tower. After ninety-seven days in her service, when he knew her, her house in Megaton seemed right. The town, the people, suited her.

But this… They descend several metal staircases, built into the belly of a cavern. Ventilation creaks overhead, low and poorly maintained. Eventually, the walkway leads into a sort of abandoned sewer system—an old homemade vault—small rooms branching off in each direction.

V guides him through the traps and tripwires, brings him finally to a room walled off like a fortress. Inside, a bed sits in the center of the room. Weaponry occupies every other available surface.

Grenades hang from the ceiling in long strings, strung up like tinsel. Frag mines fill a row of shelves, end to end. Sawed-off shotguns and assault rifles choke the floor. Pistols and hunting rifles scatter the few metal tables pressed against the wall, crate after crate of ammo wedged like broken teeth beneath.

Charon has seen military bases with fewer arms.

At his side, V shrugs, shy and quiet. "I did a favor for Three Dog. Before I met you. He gave me the location as payment. I… holed up here awhile. Brought back every gun I could find. Most of it's raider shit, but you never know. Thought maybe I'd need it."

She shrugs again, head low, rifles through a crate. For a moment, Charon can only watch.

_Before I met you._

It seems their lives are both sectioned the same way. Before you; after you.

V emerges from the crate with a pair of heavy canvas sacks, hands one to him. At last, Charon steps into the room.

He reads in V's arsenal what she does not say: _Before you, I was scared._

They are not so different, he thinks, sorting guns, watching his employer from the corner of his eye.

Before her, he was no one.

He was empty.

* * *

They carry the guns back to Big Town, take the kids aside in two teams to crowd around a table in the common house. There, they teach them how to field-strip a gun, how to clean it, how to repair the battered weapons they've brought back.

"You really are a saint," Bittercup says, watching V's hands in fascination. "Why? Like, why do you bother? Nobody else ever has."

V hesitates. Her fingers fall still on a bent trigger-spring. She looks up at the girl, frowning.

"Why not?"

But in this, they are both children. Neither has an answer. The lesson finishes in near silence, fraught with a sort of low electricity, an unanswerable question hanging like smoke above their heads.

Why not? Why had no one else ever stopped to help?

The children rebuild their guns, repair others. In an afternoon, they amass an armory of serviceable weaponry and replacement parts. But despite their armaments, despite their new confidence and the lifting odds of their survival, they arestill _just children_.

So, why not? Why no one else?

Two hundred years, and even Charon has no answer.

But then, before V, he had never recognized the question.

* * *

They remain in Big Town for the night, camped in the house the town recognizes as V's, despite their having only used it once before. V sits cross-legged on the stained mattress, staring at the Simms boy's drawing held loose in her hands.

"It's not enough," she says. "And I knew it, I did. I knew clean water was just a bandage here, but I… I hoped."

Quietly, Charon eases down next to her. Sitting at her side, her heat a wall against his shoulder, he waits in silence for the rest. Eventually, it arrives.

"I hate my father. I hate that he built me. I hate the thought that I will… that I will _have to_ fulfill my _purpose._ He talks about self-determination, but this isn't a _choice_. If I walk away, these kids die."

"Others have made that choice."

V sighs. "I can't," she says. "I fucking hate my father, but I _can't_." And then, very quietly, "What do you think?"

Charon shrugs, shakes his head. "I will follow you, regardless."

 _"No_. You _don't_ have to do this," she says. V spins, turns to face him, and the vehemence in her stare surprises him. "Enclave's been sniffing around—that's what they said in Rivet City. Fucking Project Purity could get us both killed. You don't have to do this with me. You have a choice."

Charon is not a man for words. Carefully, he brings his hands around hers, as he has seen Gob do.

"This is my choice," he tells her.

And the look V gives him—awe, hope, _pride_ —whatever happens, whatever comes, Charon will go to meet it.

She is his War.

(A/n: Sorry about the double notification. I posted the wrong chapter, thinking I'd already posted this one. Whoops!)


	17. Chapter Seventeen

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 17

* * *

Blood still stains the dirt outside the Jefferson Memorial. Charon smells old rot, spots several super mutant carcasses rotting on the distant walkway, gnarled skulls picked clean by birds.

Tight at his side, V hums with nervous energy. Though her gun remains at the small of her back, she scans the area, hands twitching, shifting from foot to foot. Without a word, Charon reaches for her, brushes fingers over her arm. V stills. A temporary reprieve, but a reprieve just the same.

Together, they make their way inside. And here, V is the woman he knew in the vault—her shoulders squared like blades, teeth clenched, _unsafe_ in the curl of her fingers. She walks with her head low, weight even, like a street fighter waiting for the bell.

Scientists lift their heads as they pass, turning from their work to watch them.

"Mercs?" he hears a woman whisper.

"Veronica," another answers.

Charon sees V tense further at the sound of her name. Her hand clenches, forcibly uncurls. It is their sign for _bottleneck_ , though Charon does not believe she is speaking to him. His employer is somewhere else, somewhere farther away.

"If you're looking for your father, he's in the rotunda," a sour-faced man snarls from a display of lights and levers. "Stop wandering around and distracting everybody, would you? Some of us have work to do."

Turning, Charon glares, meets the man's eyes and stares him down. Small, wearing little more than a jumpsuit for protection, the man breaks before the end of a full second, ducks his head and shies away. V only watches, her face a mask.

She's walking the vault again, Charon knows, a chamber full of monsters and _Never Again_.

Carefully, he touches a fingertip to her pulse. Her heartbeat bites beneath his finger—straining wolves, quick and sharp.

V swallows. She reaches for him, squeezes his searching hand in hers.

They walk on.

* * *

They find her father where he has been promised. He stands in a wide, circular chamber, a statue of an old president locked behind heavy glass. He keeps his back to the door, a week's worth of beard and a heavy frown, glaring at a screen of readouts.

For a long moment, V does not move from the entryway. She simply stands at Charon's side, staring at her father, at an old world monument sunken in the water of the bay.

Oddly, Charon thinks of Willow, thinks, _tourist,_ and he wishes it were that simple.

Looking at his employer's face, for the first time, Charon regrets the way the bombs fell. Better that they had destroyed this place or nothing at all.

Then, at last, V breathes deep. She mounts the stairs. Her father turns at the sound of her boots on the metal rungs. Seeing her, he grins.

"Veronica! Sweetheart, I'm so glad to see you."

V stops just inside the rotunda, one foot braced backwards, body bent to leave. "We're here to help," she says.

Charon catches the wary glance her father shoots him, there and gone, minnows in dark water. And then James smiles, reaches out.

For a moment, he thinks her father means to embrace her, but V goes rigid, shifts closer to Charon's side, and the man lets his arms fall. He glances at Charon again—this time, the suspicion does not dart for cover.

Quietly, he says, like an offering, "I sent you a message. About a month ago."

V purses her lips. "You sent Project Purity a love letter," she says and shrugs, eyeing the monitors and machines with barely veiled distaste. "Whatever. We're here. We'll help."

Slowly, her father nods, a man unused to traversing minefields. "Thank you," he says at last. And then, almost gently, "Believe me, Veronica. We appreciate what you've done for us already—so, so much. They say on the radio you cleaned out DC. Traders are actually getting through. Is that true?"

The woman from the vault flickers before Charon's eyes. Reading his employer's face, looking for an order, he finds a child instead—a longing, an old trust not quite dead. V's eyes slink away. She swallows. Her fingers dance to her carbine and without intending to, Charon sees a symmetry. He sees the boy guarding the Big Town gate.

And he wonders. When she fled from the vault, who taught her? Did anyone care how old she was, how often she slept? Did anyone wade into a super mutant camp for her? Did anyone press a box of InstaMash into her hands, concerned for her weight, her safety? Who brought her guns? Who laid down mines around her home? Who taught her how to shoot and how to sleep again?

Not her father, Charon knows. And he thinks, had this man been successful in purchasing his contract, he would have been a second Azhrukhal.

But at his side, V only shrugs. "We cleared out every nest we could find. Apparently it just left the Enclave a nice opening. Harkness up in Rivet City says there've been some sightings." She shrugs again, looks anywhere but her father. "It doesn't matter. The spread's pretty tight on my carbine and you should see Charon snipe with that shotgun. We just have to be more careful."

" _We_?" James says. He sizes Charon, mouth tight.

Immediately, V goes very still. "Yeah," she says, a warning. "Charon and I. _We_."

But her father is a man unused to traversing minefields. "Could I speak to you in private, Veronica?"

"No," she says, eyes dark, the set of her spine hard enough to crack diamond. "He goes where I go."

 _"Veronica_ —" her father starts, but V's fingers find Charon's wrist, anchoring, claiming.

She leans forward, teeth bared, and snarls, " _No."_

Her vehemence catches James off guard. For a moment, he pauses, steps back to reassess.

"Very well," he says and Charon hears something familiar in his voice—hears Brahms—and he knows this is a man unused to traversing minefields, but no stranger to sending others off to die.

He is a man used to giving orders, to obedience, to signing off on bodies like baggage.

A man skilled in justifying means.

And so, when the hammer falls, Charon hears it coming.

"I had hoped you would… lose interest, prevent the need for this," James says. "The man you're travelling with, Veronica—whoever you think he is, I guarantee he is _not_. When we met in Underworld, I watched him beat a man to death over a bar tab."

Still, the shot finds its target.

Charon sucks in a breath through his teeth. He wants—he wants _so badly_ —to close his fingers around the man's neck, to sink a fist into his teeth. Charon looks at V, but finds her stone still. Her fingers stay like steel around his wrist.

"You watched," she says.

"I was in Underworld for a week, sweetheart. That was bad, but I promise you, I saw worse."

"You _watched_ ," she repeats, so quietly, the whisper of a missile overhead. "Why didn't you do anything? Why doesn't anyone everdo anything?"

James frowns, pulls his face in lines of sympathy and reaches out to touch his daughter again. This time, his hand finds her shoulder. "What would I have done? What _could_ I have done that wouldn't have gotten me killed? Veronica, he's… he's not right, dear. He's _dangerous._ "

V glances up at Charon, quick and guilty, and for a moment, he wonders why. But she turns her face away before he can parse her expression, stares down her father with ice in her eyes.

"My first night in Underworld," she says, "I watched Charon rip every finger from Patchwork's right hand."

Charon goes cold. His stomach clenches, hard. He feels a hand seize his lungs and cannot breathe, feels claws raking his ribcage.

But V is not finished.

"The next morning, I watched him throw a man over the second-floor balcony," she says. "I watched him shoot another in the kneecaps. I asked around. I found out about his contract, so I bought it. I watched— _and I stopped it._ "

Charon did not know—had not realized. That day in the bar, V had come knowing full well what he was capable of, knowing how monstrous, how scarred, how soaked in blood.

Still, she had laid her caps on the counter, had _risked_ for him.

He could have killed her. One wrong word, an order, and he could have killed her.

V's fingers tighten on his wrist, searing, claiming.

Charon feels ice crack beneath his boots and an old, frozen river closing overhead.

"Be that as it may," her father says, "what's stopping someone from taking his contract? You seem to think that you are… _safe_ with him, but he is a weapon, Veronica, and weapons can change hands. Never forget that."

No.

 _No_. Not anymore. He is _not_ —he is not simply a _weapon._ Charon is what his employers _make him_ and V has changed him. She has made him something other, something of tangible _worth._ With her, he has _value—_ a price beyond what he can _kill—_ andto dismiss all she has done is an insult to them both.

Charon looks at V, hoping for a signal. Instead, he finds her white-faced and calm.

"Don't you ever talk about Charon like that," she says, very quietly. "Don't you fucking dare."

"This is my point, Veronica," James presses. "This loyalty you have for him. He doesn't share it, sweetheart, he _can't._ "

Just as calm, just as quiet, V strides forward—two quick steps—and puts her fist through a metal table.

"We are mercs," she says, wrenching her hand from the jagged, gaping hole. Fat drops of blood spatter unheeded against the tile floor. "We are offering our services. You can put us to work or send us away. But you willnot talk about Charon like that. You _will not_."

Taken aback, James glances between them, his face a mixture of regret and distaste. "I see you've made up your mind," he says, although he regards Charon like a walking plague. "Alright. I won't mention it again. But I want a word with him."

At this, finally, V breaks. "No one is stopping you!" she shouts, flinging a hand at Charon, spotting his armor with her blood. "He's _right there_ , Dad."

And the look on James' face, the ill-disguised surprise, turns Charon's stomach in disgust.

He had believed V treated him like Azhrukhal, on orders not to speak.

This, of all insults, worms deepest.

Seething, furious, Charon meets James' eyes. And Charon is ravaged, he is taller and stronger, but the doctor does not back down.

"Can you promise me she is safe with you?" he demands.

Teeth clenched, Charon shakes his head. "You cannot promise me the same," he bites. "You will send her where you cannot go. Anything to see your project to its end. You are not unique. I have served men like you before and I have killed many more."

At Charon's vehemence, James falters. But whatever his litany of failures, he is still a father. He straightens, matching Charon's glare. "And if someone removes your contract—if you are ordered—you will kill my daughter."

Charon snorts. The suggestion, the idea itself…

"Should we come to blows, I have no doubt who would walk away in the end," he says and turns, meets V's gaze.

Wide-eyed, she stares at him—shaking, sorry, frightened, _furious_ —but he sees she understands.

Charon wondered once, in Vault 101, what would happen if they fought. And Gob had asked him—function or choice?

Charon knows the answer to both, now.

Her. Always her.

He crosses the distance between them, returns to his employer's side, staring a challenge at James.

At last, the man nods. The tension in his shoulders dissipates. "Alright then," he says. "You two should get some rest. We'll start in the morning."


	18. Chapter Eighteen

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 18

* * *

They bunk for the night in one of the lower corridors, two battered mattresses shoved up against the wall, an impromptu fortress of filing cabinets and metal tables. Blood stains the floor from the super mutants they killed here. Tonight, V adds more of her own.

She paces the room like a caged deathclaw, end to end, leaving a trail of droplets behind her. Sometimes, she looks at him. Here and there, she stops, pauses in her frantic motion to meet his eyes. Several times V opens her mouth to ask a question, but always spins away again. Whatever words she wants won't come to her.

Words of his own catching in his throat, Charon stands against the wall. He does not know what she requires of him; she has given him no orders. And so he waits, watching, swallowing barely formed questions that rattle against his teeth.

At last, when the drops V leaves along the floor blur into a trail, when it becomes clear she will not—or cannot—stop on her own, Charon eases forward. He slips into her path, catches her by the shoulders and holds her. Locking his eyes with her, Charon slows his breathing, deliberate and even.

A minute passes, then another. Finally, V matches her breathing to his.

Gently, used to these minefields, Charon bandages her hand.

In the hallway outside, the intercom beeps and mumbles. V glances at the door, but makes no move to open it so they can hear. She stands with him, her eyes searching his face, her injured hand nested quietly in his.

And Charon wants to ask her, wants to understand _—s_ eeing what she had, knowing what she did—why had she purchased his contract? Why did she _choose_ him? Which of Patchwork's broken fingers set her mind? Which shotgun blast to a kneecap? Which screaming tourist crashing to the floor?

Charon does not know how to ask. He is not a man for words. He does not know where to begin. But V—V tries. She smiles at him, quick and gone like birds, wets her lips.

"Charon," she starts.

Before she can say more, emergency sirens scream throughout the facility. In a flash, V's carbine finds her hands. She sprints into the hallway, Charon hot at her heels.

Around the corner, at the top of a staircase, an Enclave solider lifts a laser rifle.

"Two more in lower maintenance," a man's voice crackles from the helmet.

Charon fires a shell into the elbow joint of his heavy armor. His rifle clatters to the ground, gives V an opening to put a bullet through his visor.

The man drops, hard, rattling the floor with his fall.

And they run.

V chants curses like a prayer under her breath, pounding down the hallway, hissing, " _Fuck fuck fuck_ ," as they barrel into the upper corridors. Two more Enclave agents meet the fate of the first. Still, V runs headlong, careless, barely pausing to clear corners before she crosses them—

To their detriment.

The third soldier rounds a corner as V does. Piloted by panic and modified genes, V sprints sideways. Behind her, Charon reacts too late, ducks slow, takes an energy blast to the shoulder that knocks him backwards.

" _No,_ " V shouts and resumes her mantra, unloading her gun into the soldier's face until a mess of bone and pulp leak from the man's shattered visor. And then she is at his side, fingers searching his shoulder, prying at old knife wounds in the leather with single minded determination.

Charon catches her hands—has to fight to pin her wrists—insisting, "I am uninjured. Mistress— _V_ —we must move."

"You're bleeding," she says. "Fuck, Charon. _Fuck_."

And she's digging stimpaks from her pocket, her gun _empty_ at her side, and she _cannot—_ he is responsible for her safety, he _will_ _not_ allow her to come to harm—and so Charon seizes her shoulder, her chin, forces her to meet his eyes.

 _"Reload_ ," he demands. "Breathe."

She shakes under his hands, vibrating like a bad battery, gone pale beneath her dirt. Still, V listens. She nods, slamming a new cartridge into her carbine.

They move on.

Climbing over wreckage and debris, they head into the rotunda. Inside the chamber, V's father slumps against the glass, radiation warnings painted in bright red on every screen.

 _"Dad!"_ V shouts, and for all her talk of hatred, lunges for the cistern.

But the man is dying—dead before her boots hit the stairs—and V stops. She watches him sink to the ground, empty bones and meat, staring at the wreckage he left around him. Another scientist, three armed Enclave soldiers, a higher-ranked official.

A moment later, Charon reaches her.

"He's gone," the woman at the terminal says. The second in command—Lin or Li—she, too, speaks as one used to unquestioning obedience. "We have to get out of here. They'll be coming for us next. We have to evacuate _now_!"

Time slows. V stares at her father behind the glass. She shakes her head.

" _Veronica!_ " the doctor snaps and there is fear in her voice behind the anger. Not a rescue; a transaction. She knows she needs V to escape this place alive. "We must leave _now_ , before more arrive. There's an old tunnel out of here. The others should remember. We have to go!"

Still, V does not move. Her eyes on her father's corpse, she shrugs. "Rather stay," she says. "Fight."

Li swears, grabs her arm and tries to wrench her away, but even with both feet planted, she cannot move V.

"Don't be stupid. There's too many," she says and when still she will not move, Li glances between Charon and V—reads something in the line of their bodies, sharing a space—and says, "They will capture you, they will _break_ you—they will torture you both and make you watch the other suffer _—anything_ to get the code."

As though she has been struck, V's head whips around. She snarls, shoulders low, hands tightening on the stock of her carbine. "Like hell they will."

Grim and determined, Li answers, "Then _move_."

* * *

In the tunnels, V cuts through the frightened herd of scientists to take point, checking her Pip-boy for hostiles.

 _A group,_ she signs over their heads to him. _At least five._

 _Plan_? he asks.

 _Cover me. Keep_ —a new gesture, indicating the group— _safe._

Charon nods, puts himself between the scientists and the open hallway as V breaks away, meaning to scout around the corner. Before she gets very far, Li strides forward, snapping, "Don't wander off! We _need_ you."

Her tone—her _entitlement_ —sets Charon's teeth on edge. His employer spins, glowering, but the woman faces her, unafraid. V may have cleaned DC, but to her, she is only James' daughter.

"You heard me," she says. "You're the only one here with any amount of combat experience. We've got the Enclave behind us and who-knows-what ahead of us. If we're going to make it through here, we need your help."

"Shut up," V growls. She eyes the group, sizing them, meeting each stare until the bearer flinches back. "That's the first rule. Don't make a sound, stick close and stay low. If Charon and I engage, stay out of our way. Get to cover if you can. Get in front of my gun, you _will_ get shot. Got it?

Somewhat taken aback, Li nods, though her jaw remains tight. She glances twice down the corridor before she answers and Charon sees the gears turning behind her eyes. Taking orders sits poorly with this woman, but she is not stupid. This is her only option.

"Understood," she says at last. "We'll follow behind you, all right? Let's go."

They move slower than Charon would like, arranging the scientists in a semblance of working order not unlike herding children. Still, they move.

Charon sticks close to V's side as they pass through the winding tunnels. What few ferals they find are easily dispatched with knives and boots, two quick blows to the head in silence. Watching red flickers on her Pip-boy, V maneuvers them around and away from a roving patrol of Enclave, pushing the scientists in shadows, keeping low, keeping quiet—

Until Li announces, "There's a locked door up ahead. I can open it, but it'll take some time," and darts ahead, out of cover and past the mouth of an open door, her heels clacking like gunshots on the metal grating.

From the nearest room, a suit shouts, "Target acquired! Engaging hostiles—go, go, _go_!" and V swears, viciously. She and Charon flank the door, one on either side, guns ready.

The scene strikes him as familiar. Charon remembers Vault 112, listening to a robobrain trundling towards them, waiting without orders. But this time, when he looks to V, she meets his eyes.

 _Cover me_ , she signs. _Suppression fire._

Charon nods. He swings through the doorway, fires high—at eyes, at arms, at anything that moves. V flattens herself against his side, uses his body to brace hers, firing clean through helmets, leaving only gore behind.

Plasma grazes his stomach, bursts against his thigh. Their guns are poorly maintained. Long in storage, unoiled, unaligned. He has withstood far worse—has _trained_ for far worse. Still, V finishes the last hostile and stabs a stimpak into his hip through a gap in his armor. With only minor burns, it is a waste, but the look on her face… Charon does not argue.

"The door's open," Li says when they emerge from the room. "Let's go!"

Striding forward, V seizes the woman by her collar and lifts her off her feet, shoves her back into the wall.

"What was the _first fucking rule_ , Li?" she hisses, bare inches from the woman's face.

The scientists stir, dart forward on instinct and immediately retreat.

"Hey! What the fuck, kid?" the sour-faced man protests, though well back, out of arm's reach.

"Everybody calm down," says another, even-toned but sweating through his coveralls. "We're okay. We're getting through this."

V snorts. She drops the doctor, watches without expression as the woman struggles to keep her feet.

"Do it again," V says and turns, staring around at all of them. "A _nybody_ breaks another rule—I'm going hunting and _you_ can make your own way home. Got it?"

Li coughs, rubbing her throat. Though her eyes are angry, she says, "Very well. Lead the way."

* * *

Yet, when they continue, when they carve their way through another pack of ferals and into tighter tunnels, despite the flickers of red on V's cufflink, once again, Li breaks rank.

"Wait," she says. "We have to stop!"

Abruptly, Charon reaches the edge of his ragged patience. He rounds on the woman, teeth bared. It would be easier, he thinks, to gag her. Without her constant chatter and without her careless, too-loud footfalls, they might get the rest of her team out alive.

But before he can sign his intent, clarify his orders, V snarls, "Does now _look_ like the _fucking_ time for cold feet? We're _going._ "

Too used to a ship full of guards and lackeys, the doctor does not know what it is to fear. Though V has lifted her without effort, though her eyes have lost their color, though she has stopped blinking, though V's every gesture paints a nightmare—too fast, too jarring—Li stands her ground.

"Garza has a heart condition," she says, draping the sweating man's arm over her shoulders. "He needs medicine or he may not make it. I'm not moving until he gets the medicine he needs!"

Abruptly, V goes very still. Even her breathing slows. In the uneasy light of the tunnels, unmoving, unblinking, she looks monstrous.

"And his heart condition is my problem," she says, very quietly. "You couldn't have taken precautions."

One by one, she empties her pockets, stimpak after stimpak, scattering fistfuls in the dirt.

"No. Of course not. Because V will fix it," she says. "Like V fixes _everything_. It's _her_ responsibility. She always makes the bad thing go away."

On her knees in ancient sewer grime, gathering medicine, Li sneers. "And I suppose you'd rather he died?"

V does not move. "Why do I care if he does?"

And it is a question—an honest question—because she _does_ care, and she does not know why.

Li does not answer, ignores her, teeth clenched, plunging stimpaks between Garza's ribs.

"My father died today," V says, sounding so lost. She meets every stare with a challenge, her grief clamped like a knife between her teeth. "My father is _dead_ and I don't know _any_ of you. So why do I care if you die, too?"

"Veronica," Li snaps. "I understand you are grieving, but you are the _only_ one who can get us out of here. These are _civilians_. I need you to keep it together _._ Can you do that or not?"

Heavy footsteps jar down the hallway ahead. A metal voice announces, " _Target acquired_!"

Charon spins, finds a team of three blocking the hall, fires into joints—necks, elbows, knees. Immediately, V drops to her belly at his side, sights along the barrel, puts two neat holes in each visor. Their metal suits shake the ground when they fall.

"Anybody _else_ forget their medicine today?" V asks, standing, her stare too hot and too dark.

The doctors look at her with wide-eyed silence, shaken. To them, she is James' daughter—she is _only_ James' daughter—her competency in combat known, but unseen. She is not what they expected.

Together, she and Charon are something sharper, wilder, vicious.

Monstrous.

No one speaks. Bitter, V smiles.

"Then shut up and get moving."


	19. Chapter Nineteen

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 19

* * *

The sewer grate opens to early morning and the Citadel looming a spitting distance away. Immediately, Li runs ahead. She harasses the door guard, shouts threats into the intercom, and against everything, the door actually opens.

They have been here before, V and Charon, weeding out the super mutants nearby. High up on their balconies, the wall guards had watched them and had never once offered assistance. Dozens of super mutants they had killed in these neighboring buildings without any acknowledgement.

But now, today, they walk inside the Citadel and find an _army_ training in the yard.

At least thirty initiates fill the firing range. Charon estimates twenty heavily armed soldiers walking the walls, another twenty guarding the grounds, counts seven separate drill sergeants and notes a busy stream of people coming and going from every door. A hive of activity, the Citadel is nothing like the sad last stand they had believed, and at his side, Charon feels V go rigid.

She listens in silence as details are shared, Li pleading again and again for help.

"All right, Madison. It'll be okay," the Elder says at last, as if to a child. As if people have not died today. As if their boots are not soaked in blood and the bandage on V's hand is not _dripping._

"Now, this is your guard detail, I presume?" the Elder asks and turns to face them, benign and smiling. "Tell me, how many Enclave did you encounter? Do you believe you were you followed here?"

Charon feels V shaking, feels every muscle in her body coiled and ready.

"We spent four months in downtown DC," she tells him, too calm, too cold, and she is the woman with one hand clenched around _Never Again_ , the woman facing down a Regulator with only a child's drawing. "We killed every super mutant we could find. Us. Just us. Two. And yet, here you are, with _hundreds_. And you do _nothing_. You watch the world fall to _shit_ and you _wait_ so you can pick the _caps from the corpses."_

"Veronica," Li hisses, appalled, scolding, reaches out as if to grab her arm.

The Elder's eyebrows lift.

"You're Veronica? I had no idea," he says. His soldiers pull away from their position at his side, starting forward, but Lyons only shakes his head, waves his guards away.

"No, no. This is James' daughter. Upset, but not incapable of reason," he says and still, with that fucking smile _,_ "Dear girl, we simply do not have the _resources_ to engage every threat in the DC area. Furthermore, it is not our purpose. We are here—"

"Not your purpose?" V repeats, shaking, so quiet. "So it's my purpose, then? You, with your hundreds, have _nothing_ to spare _—_ but _I_ have the resources? Am I the only one willing to _help_? The only one here who wouldn't happily watch the Wasteland shrivel up and die to save my own ass?"

"Veronica—" Li tries again, but it is too late.

"Is that _my_ purpose then, you cowardly piece of shit?" V yells, starting forward. "Was I _made_ for this? _IS THIS MY WAR?"_

And Charon does not think. He recognizes the line of V's body—the imminent attack—and makes a choice.

Grabbing her under the arms, Charon slings V away from the Brotherhood Elder, onto the grounds. Immediately, she swings at him, fighting tooth and nail and mean undercuts, and Charon batters her backwards as best he is able without doing damage, fights her into an empty training range.

She tries to tackle him—gets low and heads for his knees—and Charon knows that if she brings him to the ground, she will not stop. So he throws his shoulder down, twists an arm under hers and uses her own momentum to flip her.

V lands on her back in a cloud of dust, rolls to her feet and keeps going. She finds a training dummy in front of her and attacks it instead, tears at its metal face, puts two fists through the burlap. When sand pours out, she rips it from the ground, uses the wedge of concrete still clinging to the metal pole to smash the cinderblocks stacked behind it.

It takes almost an hour. At last, when nothing remains but dust, V drops the post and sinks into the wreckage, pressing her face into her knees.

Slowly, carefully, Charon sits beside her.

"I'm sorry I hit you," she offers, her head in her hands and dread in her words, not looking at him. "Did I invalidate your contract?"

With absolute certainty, Charon tells her, "No."

"I hit you, though."

"You intended to attack Elder Lyons. I removed you. You reacted to a perceived threat."

V peeks up at him sideways, something like hope, something like fear—a darting glance, there and gone again, lost in the rubble. "Did _you_ invalidate your contract?"

"I acted to protect you," he says. "It is my function."

Muffled in her knees, V snorts a laugh, sad and lost. "We're bending all the rules, huh?"

Privately, Charon believes she shatters his rules, reshapes them to her liking—reshapes _him_ —takes the shards and builds a better man. But he is not a man for words and so, instead, he reaches down, finds her hand in the rubble between them and covers it with his own.

At this, at last, V meets his eyes. The ghost of a smile tugs at the corners of her lips.

Behind them, someone whistles.

"Three-dog ain't kidding, huh?" an older man asks, short gray hair and sharp lines. "You do a hell of a lot of damage when you're pissed."

Immediately, V's smile drops. "Sorry," she says, head low. "I'll fix it."

The man snorts. "Don't bother. That's what we got the rookies for. Paladin Gunny," he says, thrusting out a hand. Surprised, V shakes with him.

Even more surprising, without hesitation, he offers his hand to Charon. Charon accepts the gesture, gauging, reading the man's face. But where he expects trepidation or disgust, he finds only a deep and abiding respect.

Despite himself, Charon trusts the man.

"An honor to meet the bloody whirlwind that cleaned DC," Gunny says and means it. He grins at them both, his teeth flat and sharp as enemy tombstones on a long-off field. "Now, I'd like to see just how much damage you two can do in power armor—and it just so happens I finally got the clearance to do it. You in?"

V matches his grin, all teeth.

"I like you," she says. "Hell yeah."

* * *

Finding a spare suit of power armor for V does not take long. She refuses a helmet and fits the majority of stock they have on hand. The most difficult aspect is obtaining grieves that will accommodate her hips. Locating something for Charon takes much longer.

"You're a damn giant," Gunny says. "Maybe Stein's old kit will fit you. That boy had legs like a spider."

Eventually, they piece together something, the majority of its pieces from a model Charon recognizes. Engaging the suit, he says as much to V.

"You've had training?" she asks, struggling with the heavy breastplate.

Charon steadies her before she falls, shrugs. "I am proficient."

And it isn't much, but after all that's happened, it is… comforting to hear her laugh.

* * *

V takes to the power armor quickly. Soon, she can run laps around the courtyard without Charon following along to adjust her stride. After learning to run, fighting comes easily.

Together, they duck into the tunnels outside the Citadel, strip an Enclave corpse for its armor. V snaps the breastplate into place around a training dummy, and with a teeth-clenching scream of tearing metal, she punches through—quick, one-two.

Throughout the yard, trainees stop. Gun barrels drop, plasma sailing unheeded into dirt. Even the veterans guarding the yard stare at V, at the broken power armor spitting sparks. For a moment, there is only silence.

Wiggling her fingers out of the wreckage of her gloves, V says, "I need better gauntlets."

Delighted, Paladin Gunny barks a laugh. Of all things, this sets the yard whispering.

"Heard they call you War," he says, grinning, inspecting the ragged holes in the armor. "They aren't kidding, huh? You really are something else."

V swallows. Dropping her ruined gauntlets, she returns to Charon's side. He feels her fingers, just barely, tapping the outer shell of his gloves.

"Guess so," she says, head low, meeting the many stares pointed her way. And Charon knows by her stance, by her unblinking stare, she expects questions. She expects her history to rear its bloodied head. She expects _monster_ and _Never Again._

They are not different at all, he thinks. When Charon left his history behind, left fire and ash and walked into war, he was not so much older than her.

But the paladin is a child with a new toy, testing the broken edges of the Enclave power armor. He is not a man for _how_ , for history. Given results, given his enemy's armor wrenched open like a rusted tin, he asks no questions, only grins.

"Armory," he says. "We've been testing a pneumatic gauntlet—high impact, hell of a kick. Think you can handle it?"

* * *

That night, despite the rigorous training, V does not immediately sleep. She packs the power armor away with care, sits on the edge of their borrowed bed, holding the child's drawing in her hand. Though worn and dirty now around the edges, the picture remains clear. Sorting through their packs at the foot of the bed, Charon can make out V's hair and carbine on a brown crayon blur.

She appears to be standing on top of the city of Megaton, firing down at a small army in reds and black—raiders, perhaps—and Charon remembers the cavern, her room filled with broken weapons. Not so far from Megaton.

V swallows, wets her lips. She traces the fraying edge of the paper with one finger.

"I'm afraid this will kill me," she whispers. "I'm afraid I'll fulfill my purpose—accomplish what I was _built_ for—and just fall to dust."

He thinks she is speaking of her father—is trying to grieve but does not know how.

And Charon is built for fire and war; comfort is beyond him. Still, he sits beside her, close enough to feel her heat through the thin fabric of his undershirt. It is not much, he knows, but it is all he can offer.

After some time, V ventures, "Would you be okay?"

"Yes," Charon says.

It is what he would have said had she asked him ten months ago, fresh out of Underworld and spattered in Azhrukhal's blood. Privately, he is no longer certain.

"Do you…" V looks up, meets his eyes, intent. "Just in case, do you want your contract?"

Charon snaps, " _No_ ," without thinking. And then, looking at her, watching his employer prepare for a battle she does not believe she can win, Charon risks a little. "Mistress," he says. "Please, do not ask me again."

V nods. Though by his contract she is his employer—though her word is his law—she accepts his request as she accepts everything he has ever offered her.

"I'm sorry. I just… I don't want you die," V says, her voice so small. And Charon remembers the library, remembers watching her curled on the floor, thinking he is all she has.

He remembers the emptiness in her face, watching her father die behind glass.

And he is a poor substitute for companionship, but for her, Charon tries.

"Good," he says. "I do not intend to."

With the ghost of a smile, V lifts her head and Charon risks a little more.

"If I should die," he offers, "know that I am satisfied it should be with you. I am… _proud_ to serve you."

V swallows. She holds his hand in hers, laces their fingers together. In the hazy half-light of the room, her eyes shine.

"I am so, so grateful to have known you," she whispers.

Charon does not know what to say. He does not have to.

They do not speak again that night.


	20. Chapter Twenty

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 20

* * *

According to Dr. Li, before his death, V's father had pinpointed the location of a GECK to Vault 87. The vault's entrance sustained a direct hit in the war, damaging the door past salvage. However, Vault-Tec records indicate Vault 87 had been built into a pre-existing cave system—possibly connecting to the Little Lamplight Caverns nearby—and so they go.

Despite the Brotherhood's hundreds, despite the Enclave's new glowing barriers surrounding the Purifier, when they leave the Citadel, Elder Lyons offers V no assistance, only luck.

"Fuck your luck," V snarls as they pass. "How about you try _doing_ something instead?"

The bouncers at the gate bristle at V's disrespect, gauntlets shifting on their weapons, an obvious threat.

V only grins—bears her teeth—meets every glare with her own unblinking gaze.

"Tell me I'm wrong," she says.

It is just as well they leave.

* * *

Though they walk together, Charon does not recognize his employer. Angry and silent, V is heedless with her safety and too careful with his. Time and time again, she leaves him as a guard, scouts ahead walking unbent in sunlight, her head high, daring any distant watcher with a scope.

Like a dog on a too-short chain, V snarls at everything, attacks nothing.

"Not worth it," she insists, reading his displeasure at the raider camp sulking in the distance. "Not right now."

Once again, faced with hostiles, they take the long way around.

And Charon loses the ability to predict her. Where once her movements were simple and precise, now, her patterns shift, erratic. He trips over her, expecting her elsewhere. At other times, Charon reaches for her and finds that she has left his side entirely. Days pass with barely a handful of words between them, but V signs constantly— _unsafe, unsafe._

She hums with anger, barely restrained violence. Fear, he thinks. Grief.

"When was the last time you slept?" V asks when they stop for the night in the mouth of an old subway. "I forgot to count. Big Town?" She shrugs, drops the wood she collected for a fire. "You should sleep tonight."

Charon shakes his head. He cannot sleep. Looking at V, he hears the sound of metal rebar colliding with her skull, her teeth closing on his name, her body flying backwards into the wall. He sees a woman staring at the corpse of her father behind glass. He feels like the weeks before Arefu.

Looking at her, watching her tear herself to pieces, Charon feels like a stranger.

She needs to sleep, he thinks. Things will be better if she sleeps.

Crouching beside her, he helps her stack the wood, begins the kindling. "I do not yet require rest," he says.

V's jaw tightens. "Bullshit. Everybody needs to sleep."

"I was—" Charon stops himself from saying _built_ , thinking of her father, her modified genes, "trained for long assignments. I will take watch."

Guarding the entrances is easy—an old requirement he understands the shape of—if someone comes, if it draws a gun, he shoots it.

When V sleeps, he can protect her.

But V only heaves an irritated sigh, glares at him out of the corner of her eye. "Alright, now I _know_ you haven't slept in a week. You always get like this when you stop sleeping."

Charon tries a different tactic. "We are not safe here."

"For fuck's sake, Charon, we are _never safe!"_ she shouts, her voice bounding down the corridor, echoing in the empty space.

Watching her, Charon falls still. He sits back on his haunches, turns his head in a question—a quiet challenge—and V bends away, folds in on herself as the fire spits and catches, crossing arms over her chest.

"Sorry," she says, softer. "I'm sorry."

Charon shrugs. His fingers graze her wrist. He does not press his orders again.

They trade watches that night—V first, Charon through to morning.

Both pretend. Neither sleeps.

* * *

Without too much effort, they reach Little Lamplight, creep carefully into the tunnels. They see the child holding the gate before he sees them—a miniature war veteran, grizzled and armed—and V looks stricken, looks sick, teeth clenched and face pale in the watery light of the caverns.

"Oh my god, he's a _baby_ ," she whispers.

Holstering her gun, she steps forward, hands raised and empty. Thinking of yao-guai, Charon follows suit.

"Hold it right there, lady," the kid says, but he draws his gun easy and gentle, lets the barrel drift to one side. Unlike the gate guard at Big Town, this child is long familiar with the gun in his hands. Trained, Charon thinks. If you can call this training. "One more step and I blow your fucking head off."

"I'd rather you didn't," V says. "I'm a friend."

The kid shakes his head. "You're big. And I don't have any big friends. You better just go out the way you came in."

"I need to get to Vault 87, though. I heard there's a way in through here."

This gives the boy pause. He cocks his head, looking them over. "Yeah?" he drawls. "But even if I felt like letting you in—which I don't—you wouldn't want to go there. That's where the monsters are."

V smiles. It does not reach her eyes, but somehow, here, it makes her look younger. Carefully, she lowers her hands. "No, actually, that's great. I kill monsters."

The kid shrugs. "Sounds like something a mungo would say."

Surveying their surroundings, Charon taps V's pauldron, gesturing to an antenna sticking up just beyond the boy's elbow. A radio. Judging by the care the boy takes not to jostle the platform, it is well-loved, positioned for optimal reception.

Unless they prefer Enclave, these children have spent every night of the last two months listening to Three-Dog's idiotic Saint of the Wastes radio play.

At his side, jaw tight, V reaches the same conclusion. In DC, she would shoot the radios the super mutants left on for their captives. In Rivet City, she settled for hiding them, stashing every unattended radio in back corridors and old filing cabinets. She even sent Three-Dog a message in the pack of a caravan courier: "if the words 'stalwart ghoul manservant' _ever_ come up during Saint of the Wastes, I will know, and I beat you with your own relay dish."

Despite her distaste, V forces herself to relax, fixes the kid another a friendly smile. "The hell's a mungo? My name's V."

"V? Like from the show? Yeah right."

"It's true," V swears, lifting her right hand. "Pinky-swear promise."

The kid leans over the edge of his balustrade, mischief like static on his skin. "Prove it."

"What, you wanna see the scars I got cleaning DC?"

The kid grins. "That depends. They on your ass?"

Bristling, Charon looks to V. But she laughs—a real laugh—and says, "Some. By now my ass is _almost_ as ugly as your face."

It is not at all what Charon expected. Yet, the kid at the gate holsters his gun.

Waggling his eyebrows, he says, "It must be nice having such good looking butt."

V shrugs. "I don't know. Do you always fart when you talk, or is that a medical condition?"

Charon has seen V ride super mutants like a rodeo star, her knife rocking in their skulls. He has seen her doing high-kicks with Nova on Gob's bar. He has watched her kill fire-breathing ants with Abraxo and a bucket full of stagnant water. But this…

Except, bizarrely, it _works._ The kid cracks up. "Okay, okay," he says, still chuckling. "You're pretty funny for a mungo. And you're on the radio. So I guess you're okay. Come on in."

And easy as that, the door opens.

"Hey! Listen, just because you're famous doesn't mean you get to do whatever," the boy says as they walk inside. "I've got my eye on you."

"That's fine," V says. "I just need to get into the Vault. You said there's a way?"

Reluctant, the kid shifts back on his heels. He hesitates, slides the gate back into place, readjusts his ammo-belt.

"Yeah, there's a way. But you _really_ don't want to go there," he admits at last. Then, after a beat, a revelation, "Or maybe you do."

The kid turns to fix them with his full attention and a skeptic's quiet aggression. "Is it true you kill monsters, or are you just a story like that Daring Dashwood guy?"

"Both?" V shrugs, smiles. "I'm not the voice on the radio, if that's what you're asking. And Three-Dog loves making shit up. But I killed a lot of super mutants in DC."

The kid eyes them. "How many?"

"Fifty, maybe? I don't know." V looks up at Charon, finds his eyes. "You like keeping track of these things. Did you count?"

The question takes him by surprise—it should not, after ten months in her service—but through two hundred years and forty-six employers, V is the only one who _notices_.

"Seventy-two," he tells her. "And nine Talon Company."

This time, when she smiles at him, it finally meets her eyes. "We should go to Vegas. I bet you count cards like nobody's business. Explains why you always beat me at poker."

Without meaning to, Charon snorts. V grins, taps a tune against the arm of his power armor.

"There you go," she tells the kid. "Seventy-two."

The kid shrugs, does his very best at looking unimpressed. "Hm. Radio said you ganked a lot more than nine Talon Company."

"I know, right? For some reason, they just wouldn't wade into super mutant territory after us," V sniggers. Then, sobering, "Anyway, we're used to this kind of thing. Just point out the door and we'll get out of your hair.

The kid grimaces, but he is only a child and the longing to believe in heroes is greater than his desire to keep a stranger safe.

"Alright, I guess. The only way in is Murder Pass. That's where the monsters try to come through. There's another door. Probably safer, but the terminal's busted. Even Joseph can't get it to work."

It doesn't matter. Charon knows V wouldn't have taken it anyway.

They are children—a city of children—and she will _always_ make the bad things go away.

"I told you, I'm a monster hunter," his employer says, sets her shoulders and grins, all teeth. "We'll take Murder Pass, clear the super mutants out for you. I can't guarantee they won't come back, but it should give you a break for a little at least."

The kid holds his mouth tight. "Big promise for a mungo."

V only smiles. "I'm good for it."

He looks at her for a long time, but at last the kid nods.

"Yeah," he says. "You know what? I believe you. Come on. I'll open the gate."


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 21

* * *

Beyond the gate, finally, V returns to her place at Charon's side. He feels her return like a warm gun, and though they face untold hostile numbers, he breathes easy for the first time since Jefferson Memorial.

They find the tunnels and corridors of Murder Pass not unlike the bunkers of DC, well suited to traps and bottlenecks. Falling into an old pattern, worn smooth and easy with use, they sneak through the shadows, dispatching those they can in silence.

When V's latest knife breaks in the neck of the third before she can sever its vocal chords, the super mutant howls in rage and pain. Charon puts a slug through its eye socket—too late, the alarm already raised.

In the distance, more pound down the hallway towards them, howling threats. They wait. They wait until the shuddering steps draw close and bite pins, rolling grenades around the corner.

Mutants scream. In the cloud of blood and dust and noise, they fall back, hidden in wreckage, in shadow, and aim high. Soft flesh splatters—eyes, mouths—and twisted bodies thunder to the floor. Easy as practice.

When there is silence, bloodied to her metal elbows, V brushes her arm against his. Their metal suits grind, jarring and unfamiliar, but Charon appreciates the gesture.

They move on.

Soon they reach larger chambers, wider hallways. Clearing the vault is not easy, but they have trained for this—four months in the belly of DC, they have trained for this—and super mutants litter the ground behind them, bleeding into their own bags of body parts and gore.

V draws them to her with the radio. And because Three-dog is nothing if not relevant, her cufflink plays her theme song.

 _"Come and hear, all thee that fear War, and I will declare what she has done,"_ Three-dog intones over heavy drums, over their gunfire, and the sound of their boots against the metal floor. " _Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of your avenging angel. V walks! Welcome, the Saint of the Wastes."_

Grim, blood-spattered, V shakes her head.

"Even super mutants shouldn't have to listen to this shit," she mutters, but the alternative is Enclave and so she does not turn it off.

They fight on, carefully, leaving traps behind them and slinging frag mines ahead, around corners, to break unwary legs. Eventually, under their assault, the super mutants thin.

Backs to the wall, they creep through a chambered corridor. Inside, each room houses a twisted mockery of a human corpse, violently mutated, in various stages of decay. Beneath her metal sleeve, over the radio-actress swearing vengeance, V's on-board Geiger counter begins to complain.

"That green stuff's radioactive, I guess," V whispers to him, pointing through a window. "Fuck. Hope that's not what we came for dripping all over everything."

Before Charon can reply, an intercom engages from a room at the cross-halls up ahead, a super mutant pressing close to the glass. "You! Over there! Please, come speak to me."

V drops back. Charon flattens to her side, gun ready, waiting.

In DC, they encountered several Super Mutants smart enough to beg. Dangerous and cunning, the beasts had learned V came when she heard a human's cry, mimicked it in hopes of drawing her in. But, while clever, none of them were patient. If she and Charon lingered within their hearing, outside their vision, they would always break, attack.

This one, however, makes no move to open its chamber. Only pounds at the glass to catch their attention, saying again through the intercom, "Please! I will not—cannot—hurt you. Please, come speak to me."

Keeping careful aim at the door, Charon glances at V. She shakes her head. "It's smarter than the others. I don't trust this."

"You must use the intercom," the mutant insists, still with one massive hand pressed against the glass. "I cannot hear you otherwise. Please!"

V considers one of the few remaining grenades left in her shoulder storage compartment, but closes the hatch on her armor. The doors and glass within vaults were designed to withstand explosions. From here, they can do nothing to hurt it.

Slowly, Charon creeps forward, eyeing the door. In the low lighting, around the corner, he can just barely make out the labels of its hydraulic system.

"Locked," he tells V. "It is trapped."

The knowledge does little to comfort either of them. How dangerous must a super mutant become to frighten its own kind? What had it done to earn its imprisonment, but win its life? Could it not be killed, only tricked, trapped?

V shakes her head again. "Let's go," she says, flicking off the radio. "I want no part of this."

"Wait! Please, I can assist you!" it howls as they pass, its voice dogging them down the hallway well after its bulging flesh drops out of sight. "You are here for the GECK—you must be—but I promise you, you cannot reach it alone. Free me! Allow me to help!"

* * *

As it turns out, the monster is not wrong.

They fight their way through the last of the super mutants, into the science labs. There, they find a flaking sign above a doorway—once Research and Development, now _search Devel—_ and V smiles. Smiles, until they walk inside and her Pip-boy starts growling.

They reach the mouth of doorway labeled _Equipment_ before the Geiger counter forces V back, digging in her pack for a bottle of Rad-X, the lid still stained with river mud.

"Fuck," she hisses, tearing off a glove to run fingers through her hair. "Of course, it would be in there. Of course."

Charon steps a little closer, feels radiation like sunlight on his face, a warm and swelling strength. He looks at his employer, stricken and frustrated, and the choice is not so difficult.

"I will retrieve it."

"No," V blurts immediately, stopping him midstride. Her ungloved hand closes around his arm, tugging him back. "You're nobody's errand boy. We'll find another way."

It is not what Charon expected. Frowning, he turns, twists his arm to catch her hand, gently as he is able through the thick metal. Perhaps, he thinks, she has misunderstood.

"It is within my capability," he tells her. "It is only radiation."

V shakes her head. Her fingers find his arm again, anchoring, claiming. "It can still _hurt you_. It's at least a hundred rads a second in that doorway. Past that door, who knows? Maybe it gets worse."

"I can tolerate higher," he insists.

 _"Can_ you?"

He sets his jaw. "Mistress, you do not understand."

V squares her shoulders. "It's too dangerous."

And Charon is not a man for words, but he—he _wants_. He wants to make her understand, wants to _choose_ , and so he tries, as best he is able.

"I was designed to withstand greater," he says. "I am _built_ for this."

He notices, then, how fast V breathes, how dark her eyes have grown.

"Yeah, until you're _not_." Her voice jumps like electricity. "Until you go feral."

Searching her face, Charon hesitates. Something is wrong, something is broken, but he does not know what.

Always before—always—when he offered, V trusted his judgment. But today, she looks at him as though she does not see him, as though she does not _know_ him. She will carry the things he leaves in her pack because he has asked her to. She will clear battle strategies with him before she wades into any bloodbath. She offers him _choice_ when he cannot choose—rebuilds him into something other than a weapon—

But today, he offers, and V does not accept.

Quietly, he ventures, "I will not. Prolonged isolation triggers the change."

Too late, hip deep in her minefield, Charon realizes his mistake.

"Like you're not the definition of isolation! Charon, you lock yourself up inside your head—I can count on one hand the number of times you've smiled—and you want to tell me you'll be okay in there? You want to promise it won't break you? _No_ , Charon. _I can't lose you,"_ she says, her knuckles colorless around the arm of his suit.

"V—" he tries, but she only shakes her head, breathing jagged, repeating, " _No._ No. No," a new mantra, the metal beneath her fingers beginning to whiten under stress.

Before she can break through his bracer, Charon pries her hand away, holds it in his own, though he cannot feel her pulse or her heat through the metal. It feels wrong, he thinks, and perhaps this is the break between them.

Reaching for her leaves him rattled and disjointed—like throwing silverware every time they touch, two twin cans rattling against each other—and before today, before _now_ , Charon did not realize how often he searched her out, how frequently her hands brushed his.

He tries to breathe for her, to give her some anchor, but she cannot see the rise and fall of his chest beneath the suit. V breaks away, eyes wild and dark, looking too young, looking monstrous.

"I can't do this alone," she whispers, hands clenched and shaking. "I can't. Charon, I can't. I _need_ you."

"It is my function to protect you," he tells her, gently as he is able. It brings her no comfort.

V swallows. She nods. Her breathing does not steady—too fast, too jagged—but she straightens, turns whip-fast and eyes the door.

"We'll use the mutant."

* * *

"I cleaned DC," V snarls into the intercom, by way of greeting.

"We are aware," the mutant says, standing quiet before the glass.

"So you know that your brothers would scream for help, would play at taking each other hostage in hopes I'd spare at least one."

The mutant smiles. "Yes," he says. "You are cunning. You remind my brothers what it is to be human. What it is to fear."

V meets his eyes, gauging, challenging. The mutant does flinch or attack. At last, V nods. She powers up the terminal beside his door. From what Charon sees over her shoulder of the passing coding, it is not an easy hack. But V fixates with single minded focus. Within five minutes, the door hisses open.

"I'm trusting you," she growls, one hand on the butt of her carbine.

Solemn, the mutant nods. "And it is a rare gift," he says. "Thank you. I will retrieve your GECK."

* * *

As they return to Research and Development, the mutant shares his history. Fawkes, he calls himself, after an old world hero, long dead even before the war. When V asks him his crime, the reason for his incarceration, he tells them, "Intelligence. Curiosity. Humanity. Take your pick," and grins a jagged smile.

By the time he hands V the GECK they came for, she trusts him.

"Do you want to travel with us?" she asks, making space for the heavy suitcase in her pack. "You'll have safer going in company."

Charon stiffens. He does not trust the mutant, whatever his name and past—does not trust V's judgment, her eyes still wild, her fingers curling _unsafe_ at her side—but the mutant shakes his head.

"No, there are certain tasks of my own I must complete here first. Then, I believe I will travel." Carefully, he reaches forward with a massive paw, enveloping V's shoulder. "You are changing so much in this world; I would watch it pass."

Thankfully, V does not press the matter. "If you need a place—if you get tired—there's a city in the Museum of History in DC," she says instead. "It's for ghouls, but I think you have at least enough in common."

"I will consider it," Fawkes says, still smiling, hideous and kind. "Go with fortune, wanderer."

* * *

They go. They do not go with fortune.

First around a corner, V freezes. "Get back!" she hisses, shoving Charon behind her. "Go, _run!"_

It is an order.

Charon does not question. Cannot question. He turns.

He obeys.

Behind him, he hears an explosion. He hears V fall.

But he has been given an order.

"Objective is secured, sir," a man's voice filters through power armor speakers.

"Good work, solider," say another, unhindered by metal or mesh. "Make sure the GECK is secured aboard my vertibird." And then, after a moment, "You're certain she's unharmed?"

In the next room, Charon crouches in shadow, feeling ice like knives in his stomach. A fist seizes his lungs. _Vertibird_ , he thinks and cannot breathe. His heartbeat burns in his ears, throbs in his teeth.

V fell. She is injured. It is his function to protect her, but she _ordered him_ to go.

"Yes, sir," he hears. "She'll pass out shortly, but we can revive her."

"Excellent. Prepare her for transport immediately."

Charon chokes, his armor a vice. They are taking her. They are _taking his employer._ But he has been given an order. V told him to get back. And his function is to protect her, but his standing orders are to engage when she does and she _cannot_ _engage_ , therefore _he_ cannot engage.

Hidden in shadow, sucking air through his teeth, Charon listens to the sound of V's suit disengaging. Listens to orders barked and metal wheels—a gurney, he thinks, hearing buckles and locks.

They are taking his employer, but Charon has been given orders and he cannot engage.

Still, when they move, he moves. He keeps well back, out of sight. Despite their legend—War and Death intertwined throughout the wastes—no one looks for him, and so no one sees him. Expecting no resistance, the soldiers are careless, boisterous. No one guards their back.

He could disable two, Charon thinks. Cripple three more. But ten heavily armed and armored soldiers guard V's fallen form. They fill the hallway, walking three deep, into the main entrance of the vault. And he cannot—he cannot engage; he has been given orders.

But if he _broke_ an order—

Charon vision blackens at the edges. He staggers, remaining upright through force of will alone.

He cannot break an order. He _cannot._ It is impossible. But even were it otherwise, he would not survive these odds.

So creeping, still, Charon follows them.

The take V to the vault's entrance. The door remains shut, the 87 distorted by the blast that damaged it. Yet, nearby, they've… _cut_ into the wall somehow, left a hole large enough to drive a truck through. Even from here, Charon hears V's Geiger counter spitting static, screaming as the rads mount higher.

It should kill them. It should kill _all of_ _them._ But like a habit, they shove needles in their arms—plunge two into V's hip—and walk on.

Charon counts to ten and follows, sidling through the opening, looking for any opportunity. They will have made camp nearby, he thinks. Probably to the north, around the sluggish remnant of the river, easily defended and with fresh water nearby. He will follow. It is his function to follow his employer. When V wakes, he will arm her. She will give him orders.

They will be alright. They have survived worse. Together, they will kill _everyone_.

Outside, the radiation hits him like an open oven. It sings in his veins, searing, promising strength and speed and possibly, possibly he could—

Charon sees the waiting vertibirds. Three, gunned like fortresses.

And he knows the Enclave is not camping nearby.

One vertibird could mean a simple objective with a seat warming higher-up playing tag-along, but three means a mission— _always_ —heavily armed and headed back to base.

Fire screams in Charon's bones. Smoke fills his mouth. Old bullet wounds howl and bleed and he cannot breathe. He cannot _think_ through the crushing pain in his skull—don't break orders; don't lose V—cannot hear the whir of the vertibird blades over Brahms thundering in his ears.

He hears his own breathing through a memory of power armor filters, ragged, bloodied, a different suit reading vital stats, telling him he's bleeding into his lungs, seek medical attention immediately. He feels the floor of a vertibird dropping away beneath his feet, rending metal, a screaming free-fall.

Brahm's Variation on a Theme, sweet like plague flowers, his mouth full of ashes.

Blindly, seeing black, seeing V's— _not dead_ —body, seeing memories, Charon follows the vertibirds as far as he can. He does not get far. He does not even make it to the river before the vertibirds drop out of sight, leaving nothing. No smoke, no clear path, no trail of mist in the sky.

V needs him, he thinks, but the vertibirds are gone and Charon cannot feel his legs.

Numb, he staggers to a stop, still searching the sky.

His employer needs him, a small part of him insists. She cannot do this alone.

She told him so.

But he lost her. He let her go, he thinks as the rads fade from his body. Let her die. And now he is alone—without contract, without employer, without _V_ —and Charon does not know what to do.

He failed _._ He _failed._

An hour passes. Slowly, he begins to walk again, though without purpose, without direction.

He has never failed before.

So why then, of all his employers, did he fail _her?_

V needs him, he thinks. His eyes fall from the sky and Charon begins to shake.

He cannot follow the vertibirds. He cannot save her. He has not been given orders. He cannot save her. He cannot _order_ himself—cannot _choose_ this—cannot track what he cannot see. He cannot save her. He does not know where to begin.

And so, broken, Charon turns towards Underworld.

He does not know where else to go.


	22. Chapter Twenty-Two

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 22

* * *

V is not dead. She will come.

He returns to his fucking corner, amongst a sea of whispers. And though it had become a sort of meeting place in Azhurkhal's absence, the Ninth Circle becomes a tomb for him. People abandon it immediately at the sight of his arrival. Only Quinn stays behind, ventures through the doors—fucking Quinn, wearing their spent shells like a talisman around his neck.

"Are you alright?" he asks. He does not have to ask: _is she_? They are separate. They are _broken_.

Charon does not answer him. The answer is obvious.

He is alone.

Gently, Quinn leaves. Charon kicks down the door to Azhrukhal's storeroom, smashes open a crate of whisky. Bottles break, the jagged glass leaving bloodied streaks down his arm when he reaches inside.

It doesn't matter.

Charon drinks until his vision hazes, until he cuts his mouth on a shard of broken glass and every swallow sears.

 _I can't do this alone_ , V whispers. _I can't. I need you._

He pelts the walls with empty bottles, but it is not enough. He upends tables, shatters chairs, rattling uselessly in the empty shell of the Ninth Circle, a shrine to their first meeting.

A shrine. A tomb.

V is dead. She isn't coming.

* * *

Time jumps and shudders, moving in starts. At first, he can judge the passing hours by the sound of Cerberus' propulsion system, the machine making its rounds. But eventually, Brahms grows too loud, and Charon loses track of himself.

Without contract, without employer, he is less than nothing. He is inconceivable. Adrift. He has never been given orders for this contingency, and so V _must_ return. She is not dead. She will come. She would not leave him. She knows how—how _important—_

 _He goes where I go,_ she said.

Charon holds the words like a worry stone, sees them in the bottom of every bottle before he shatters the empty glass carcass.

 _He goes where I go_.

But he doesn't. And as the hours lurch by and jolt back, Charon thinks maybe it was an order— _you go where I go_ —and he failed. He broke an order.

He broke an order and Charon's vision hazes at the edges. He holds the idea like a knife in his teeth, even when his vision flickers, when his head spins and old wounds burn. He broke orders. He _left her_. So, what does he matter, now? He is without her and contract—he _orders himself_ —and Charon holds onto the idea until it brings him to the ground.

Blacking out is a temporary relief. He does not dream. Time passes, but then, what is time? Eternity stretches at his feet.

Charon puts his fist through the wall, tearing chunks of plaster free. He raids Azhrukhal's hidden stash, downs vodka like water.

Still, he feels V just behind him, her fingernails sinking in his name. " _I can't do this without you_."

But she can. She is.

Or she is dead.

* * *

Charon spends vast portions of indeterminable time under heavy fire, two hundred years ago. He remembers his name—the old one, the lost one—and forgets it again soon after.

He thinks of V, her hands around his contract. She would have liked to hear it.

Thinks of V, and he _knows_ she is alive. Or if she is dead, it does not matter. She will come, regardless. She will always come. If she is War and he Death, then she will live forever, regardless of what hunts her. He will never ferry her across the river.

For some time, he manages to hold onto this.

Charon piles the broken tables and chairs into the far corner of the bar. He stacks the slats of broken crates. He changes his clothes. He cuts his hair. He sleeps.

Hours later, Charon wakes hazy and hung over, feeling V's heat at his back. And he laughs—he laughs like a fist to the gut—because she is okay, she is _here_. His world rights itself.

She is alive. She _came_.

But Charon turns to touch her and cold air envelops him. The bed is empty. The bed is broken and bloodied from the split skin of his knuckles. Charon is alone.

And V is dead.

* * *

He loses himself. But, at least, in a way, he finds her.

Charon sees her constantly. V's hands curl around his shoulders, her fists sink through his ribs.

"I can't do this alone," she whispers, hands clenched and shaking. "I can't. Charon, I can't. I _need_ you."

Other times, she barrels through the door raging. "You fucking coward! You left me there to _die_. After everything I did for you, you just hand me over to the Enclave? You _run?_ You disgusting shit _, how could you?_ "

And Charon tries to speak, but his mouth fills with smoke. Without his contract, without her, he is not a man at all. She advances; he retreats. He wants so badly to touch her, but does not dare. He is hallucinating, he knows. This is not real. But it may be the last time—it may be the only time—he sees her again.

The pain, at least, he knows how to bear. Waking to find himself standing in the corner, staring blind, fifteen years of habit—this, he understands. He was built for torture, once upon a time.

No, the worst comes late at night, three days in.

Charon wakes to a noise and finds V standing in his doorway, dirty and worn and so _solid._ And he knows better—he _knows better—_ but she looks at him and breathes like someone has struck her, says, "Thank god, you're okay. You're _okay_ ," trembling, her eyes wet.

And he believes it _._

He does not mean to, but her eyes, her smile—he _trusts_ her—and Charon is on his feet and halfway across the room before, like a broken light bulb, she blinks out. Another ghost, gone.

Charon savages the Ninth Circle. He rends plaster from the wall in chunks, tears the bar from the wall entirely, leaves its jagged wreckage scattered across the floor.

"I can't do this alone," V whispers in his ear. "I can't. Charon, I can't. I _need_ you."

V is dead.

V is—not—dead.

* * *

Outside the door, a brief moment of lucidity, Charon hears Winthrop. "He's getting worse."

He hears the jangle of his own goddamned shell casings rattling against V's, hears Quinn say, "Give him time."

"If he's off his leash—"

"He's off his _rocker_ , Win. She didn't come back."

_She didn't come back._

As if she had a _choice_. As if _he_ had a choice. As if he could have saved her, could have fought harder—could he have fought harder?—did he follow his orders or did he break them?—did he let her die?

"I can't do this without you," V whispers.

But she is without him now.

Charon throws a table at the door. The voices outside retreat.

The voices in his head _scream_.

* * *

He blanks and wakes, blanks and wakes to her face superimposed over another's, an old interrogation chamber, the words long forgotten. But though the room hazes, though his memory fades, Charon sees her eyes harsh and stark, the accusation, her broken arms bound behind her to the chair.

"They will torture you both," Li had said, "and make you watch the other suffer."

When the interrogator leaves, V spits blood, spits teeth. " _Why_?" she hisses at him, her right eye swollen shut. "How could you?"

The interrogator returns, carrying a gun. He starts at the knees, works his way up.

V screams. Until she doesn't.

But no—she is alive. _She will return_. And Charon finds himself in the fucking corner again, this time staring at the wall.

In some distant part of him, Charon is scared. He does not recognize himself. He loses time. He tastes smoke and wakes standing. He thinks, without his contract, his training is breaking down.

He does not recognize himself.

"V is alive." He says it to mirrors, looking at a man with short hair and skin. "She will return."

Sometimes, though, he tells the corpse she's dead.

* * *

A week later, Quinn—Charon assumes only Quinn would dare—shoves a radio through the door, the volume as high as it will go.

His back against the wreckage of the bar, Charon stares at it. Slowly, by degrees, its noise settles into words. Some of these, even through a haze of Brahms, he understands.

President dead. Enclave in flames. Enclave offline.

And then, "if that weren't good enough news, word is our very own Saint of the Wastes made it out of there in one piece. But then, we already knew _that_ would happen. Come on, Enclave. I _know_ you've heard my broadcasts. _Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of your avenging angel._ Did you think I was _kidding_?"

Three-dog laughs and Charon cannot breathe.

V is alive. She is coming.

* * *

He washes up, changes clothes, finds his leather armor. Charon leaves the battery powered tin can in the corner, piles the wreckage of the bar on top of it. Taking the least broken table he can find, he reattaches a pair of legs so he can clean his guns.

Charon returns to his corner, sits a room of memory and splinters, and he waits.

V comes. Of course she comes. She will _always come_.

She walks through the door without hesitation, smelling of smoke and blood, real and whole and immediately, Charon stands.

V stares at him, eyes dark, her armor blackened. He can see the edges of a poorly healed burn, scabbed and blistered, over her ear and along the right side of her head. The way she holds her arm, there is almost certainly more beneath her armor.

Charon aches. He hurts in his bones. He wants to touch her, but he does not move.

Crunching glass beneath her boots, V crosses to him. He feels her heat like a blaze, like a warm gun, but Charon looks at her and feels out of ammo, staring down a wild dog.

He wants to tell her—he wants her to _know—_ but Charon cannot find the words and once again, his mouth fills up with smoke.

V pulls off her glove. Carefully, she touches him as though she is not certain he exists. Charon seizes her hand in his, like a lifeline, mindful of her injuries, and cannot let go.

She is alive.

She is _alive._

"I didn't get them all," V says, voice hoarse and burnt. "They sent out the vertibirds. A last stand at the purifier. I have to go. Are you with me?"

"I will follow," he says. "Always."

It is not a promise. More like a prayer. A quiet, twisted little hope daring too much.

But V nods. She does not untangle their hands.

She believes him. She _trusts_ him.

Function or choice, Gob asked him. Returning to her side, Charon knows he finally understands.


	23. Chapter Twenty-Three

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 23

* * *

This time, at least, they do not go into battle alone. V strides into the Citadel, her face a mask of flame and rage, wolf riding high beneath her seams.

"Sarah, we've been over this before," they enter in time to hear the Elder say. "We barely have the manpower to keep the Citadel fortified. The risk is not worth the reward."

V growls, "Of course not. God forbid you risk your ass to help _anyone_ not decked in tin."

The Elder's face contorts in a series of complicated emotions—irritation, relief, guilt—before settling, carefully blank. "You've returned. We had feared you were lost. Were you successful in your mission?"

"I was captured by the Enclave. You couldn't spare the men, so now the Enclave has the GECK. Installing as we speak, and with a lovely little virus that will kill everything _unpure._ How's that for fucking successful?"

At the Elder's other side, the blonde woman steps forward, "Send us in," she demands.

The Elder sighs, terminally inconvenienced by the wholesale slaughter of the wastes. "That _is_ grim news. Yes, very well. But you're not going in alone," he says, and then, to a scribe at a wall of terminals. "Is Liberty Prime functional?"

Politics or orders, they do not wait to hear the rest. V's glove brushes Charon's forearm and she turns, bounding up the stairs. As ever, he follows, tight on her heels. They reach the center of the courtyard before the blonde woman sprints through the doors after them.

"V, wait!" she calls.

And V stops. She turns, but her face does not change. Too dark, too hot, V stares her through. Lyons does not react. It is, Charon thinks, what the woman expects. V is not Brotherhood, not civilian. She is something both more and less than human—monstrous, useful, dangerous—her words worth no more than her muscle and lead.

"The Pride and I have decided that after all you've survived, you've done enough to be an honorary member of Lyon's Pride," she says, donning her father's sweet, patronizing smile. "So, congradu—"

V untangles her hand from Charon's. Viper fast, she socks the woman in the mouth.

From the set of her shoulders, the line of her back, Charon can see she has restrained herself considerably. Still, unprepared for the blow, Lyons staggers back, nearly loses her balance until her suit's servos kick in.

"All I've _survived_?" V thunders and though she is smaller, she towers over the woman now, muscle and teeth and vicious intent. "Where were you when raiders swarmed Megaton? Where were you when giant ants overran Grayditch? Where were you we cleaned DC? Where were you when I _destroyed Raven Rock?"_

Lyon's spits blood, straightens and strides forward. "Listen, I don't know who you think you are—"

"I am _War_ ," V says, standing like battle. "And I know where you were. At home. At home, in your own goddamned bed, playing at heroes with your little friends. So no, Lyons, I haven't done _enough_ to join your fucking club. I've done _too goddamned much_."

Boot to boot, Lyons looms, tries to threaten with her size, tries to force V backwards. The metal of their suits flattens together with a heavy clank, but still, V does not move.

"Make no mistake, kid," Lyons growls, so close their noses almost touch. "If we didn't need your daddy's little code, I would flatten you."

No. No, she fucking _would not_.

Immediately, Charon's shotgun drops into his hand. He levels it over V's shoulder, the cold steel grazing Lyon's cheek.

V reaches back, her hand closing over his elbow, but Charon does not stand down.

"You would try," he says. Slowly, carefully, Lyons backs away. And with his gun balanced on her shoulder, V laughs.

"He's got a point, Lyons. You don't take a shit without _your_ daddy's permission. What, you gonna file an ass kicking requisition form? Submit some illustrated proposals?"

Lyon's jaw tightens. In the sky above them, the massive robot swings overhead, drops down outside. The rest of the Lyon's Pride filter from the door in formation, headed toward the gate.

"Keep up," she snaps, falling in with them. "We'll do the heavy work, princess, you just follow along looking pretty. You're no good to us dead."

Again, V laughs, dark and low. She shakes her head. Her fingers twine in his.

"I'm dead already," she says. "I'll do what I want."

* * *

Emergency sirens light the air before they even reach the rotunda.

" _Sabotage_!" Li yells over the intercom, struggling to be heard over gunshots and gore. " _Radiation is building in the chamber. I repeat, radiation building in the chamber._ "

So they go, fighting their way through. V fires her carbine left-handed. When Enclave draws too close, she sinks her pneumatic fist through their armor, easy as tearing paper. Like flipping a switch, the power fails in their suits, the un-propelled weight bringing them to the ground. With the speakers disengaged, it is hard to hear them scream.

Lyons and V enter the rotunda through different doors, create a crossfire that mows down everything in their path.

 _"The radiation in the chamber needs to be released_ now _,"_ the intercom demands. " _The damage otherwise will be catastrophic_."

"I'm seeing lethal levels," Lyons protests, reading the display, and Charon knows the code— _he knows the code_ —but before he can reach the stairs, V yells, "Charon, the door!"

It takes him too long to dispatch the Enclave soldiers shouldering through. By the time he turns, V is in the chamber.

 _"No_!" someone—himself?—yells and Charon bounds up the steps, throws himself at the glass.

Lights flash at V's back. The sirens dim. Water rushes around the statue of a dead hero.

Trembling, V signs, _your pocket._

She's cold, Charon thinks.

_She's dying._

He does as she asks, finds the frayed edges of his contract beneath his fingers.

Function or choice, Gob asked him. So Charon makes a choice. He brings the butt of his shotgun down on the door control panel.

"What are you doing?" Lyons screams. "You open that chamber, you'll kill us all!"

The panel bends. Inside, V mouths, " _No,"_ slumping to the ground as her father had, one hand against the glass.

Charon lifts his gun again.

Lyons launches forward, bent low—to tackle him, he thinks, the way she must have seen V do before—but this close to the door, seeping radiation lights a fire in his bones. Charon uses her momentum against her, grabs her shoulders and swings her around, over the railing and onto the floor.

Before he can bring his gun down again—before Lyons can regain her feet—the patchwork shielding on the chamber blows. Radiation spills through the door like a broken dam, sends him staggering back with the force of the blast.

Vicious, bitter, Charon grins. He steps forward, swings, and puts his gun through the glass.

* * *

For some time, he is feral.

He does not remember where he is. Does not recognize the people around him, swarming in metal suits. He hears Brahms, hears gunfire, hears the Head screaming, " _Kharon Trinadtsat, uderzhivaite positsiyu_! _Uderzhivaite positsiyu_!"

Hears V laughing, the clatter of bottles on a bar, singing every song she can think of.

Hears gunfire. Hears a vertibird crashing from the sky, metal rending around him.

Feels V's fingers on his arm, there and gone again. Feels whisky burning in his throat, feels her head on his shoulder, remembers waking up to her hair in his mouth.

He remembers… remembers the Ninth Circle, the woman in ill-fitting sheepskin, the wolf beneath her seams. Remembers the Ninth Circle, V—not V—standing in the doorway, " _Thank god, you're okay. You're okay."_

The metal suits come and fall back, surge and retreat. Charon's own wolf howls, gnashing teeth.

He remembers the yao-guai in the dust, three oily streaks.

He will not let them take her.

Function or choice—

They have taken too much already.

He must be speaking, though. He must have yelled something at them—sworn, at least—because many metal suits leave, returning shortly with a scribe. She is small but sturdy, unafraid. She holds a book in her hands. Flipping between the pages, with halting, childish inflection, she tells him, " _Vash drug ranenniy. Zhivoy._ _My mozhno pomoch'."_

This, of all things, gets through. Charon stops. He watches her, gauging, blocking V behind his body.

" _Vash drug ranen,"_ the woman repeats, insistent, urgent. _"My mozhem pomoch'."_

Though her accent is garbled, her words precise and broken, Charon… Charon trusts her. _Needs_ to trust her.

As gently as he can, he disengages V's armor, cradles her to his chest and stands. Facing the small woman, he asks, " _Gde?_ "

Behind her, some of the suits protest. He hears them, but cannot understand. They are unimportant. If they draw guns, he will shoot them. Until then, he watches the small woman, holds her eyes, scenting for weakness. But whatever the suits say to her, she waves them off, barks something cold and clear and gestures for him to follow.

Function or choice, Brahms like a fire in his head, Charon follows.

* * *

She takes him to fortress, to an operating theater with a squadron of doctors standing by and Charon snarls, " _Nyet. Nyet! Nikogda bol'she,"_ because V cannot, because his function is to _protect her—_

But the scribe plants her small frame, roots herself like a mountain and glares him down. She has marked pages in her book—expected this—points at the table and demands, " _Ty khochesh' yeye smerti_? _Opuskat yeye_!"

The accent is wrong, terrible, broken, and the place smells like death, death and smoke and combat and he will not— _he will not—_

But the scribe hits him— _swats him_ with the flat of her book when he lunges at a doctor—and barks, " _Nyet! Opuskat yeye!"_

He could break her. He could tear her head from her shoulders with his bare hands.

But he does not.

Instead, Charon listens.

The doctors stink of fear, uneasy glances passed between them. He wants to kill them, too.

The scribe glares.

Carefully, so carefully, Charon eases V onto the table. His saint, his War. Her chest rises and falls, barely breath at all.

 _"Are you with me?"_ she'd asked, newly alive again.

 _"I will follow,"_ he'd told her. _"Always."_

And so Charon retreats to the corner, arms crossed. He will wait. He will not leave her. Not again. Will not fail her again. But the scribe barks, " _Nyet! Vne!"_ and bullies him outside to threats of V's health.

She takes him to the courtyard, to the training dummies.

" _Dva chasa,"_ she says, holding up two fingers. " _Dva._ _Ostavat'sya._ "

"V—" he starts, fire in his head, in his blood, and Brahms thundering in his ears. He cannot leave her, he cannot _lose her—_ he cannot—

The scribe shakes her head, points at the training dummies, indicates that he should punch those instead of doctors and scribes.

" _Nyet,"_ she says. " _Ostavat'sya. My mozhno pomoch'."_

And backing off a distance, she stands and waits, arms crossed and eyes so sorry.

She is not V, but Charon trusts her.

He waits.

* * *

The words around him do not re-form into a language Charon recognizes until the scribe returns him to V's side. His employer lies on a cot with a needle in her arm, head shaved, skin gray, but breathing. She is _breathing_.

Abruptly, sound returns all at once—he hears the soldiers moving up and down the hall, hears Three-dog cheering on the radio, hears V _breathing_ —and Charon drops to his knees beside her bed.

She is alive.

She is _alive._

"Good god, Yun, what the hell are you thinking, bringing him in here?" someone snarls. "She is _extremely_ fragile and he's—the level of radiation in that chamber, he's probably _feral_. Somebody get Garton. Van, too. We'll need them both."

"He is not feral," the scribe snaps, wielding her book like a rocket-launcher. "He is a _soldier_. That was PTSD, goddamnit—fucking _textbook_ intrusive recall—and if anyone hits the alarm, I will _hand you your ass._ "

V's fingers curl on the bed. Once, twice. Charon slips his hand beneath hers, squeezes it between his own.

"You don't have that authority," the man protests, but does not sound sure.

"I don't need that authority, Meyer. I know I can take you and I will take my chances. If V didn't want him with her, he wouldn't be with her. You leave him alone. He stays."

V's fingers twitch in his, curl and hold.

"I will not leave," Charon says, hears the doctor jump. "My place is here."

And he is dangerous. He is an old monster—badly tamed, ill-fitting sheepskin and wolf beneath his seams—on his knees at V's side.

The doctors see.

Quietly, they leave.


	24. Chapter Twenty-Four

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 24

* * *

Charon spends the next two weeks unmoving at V's bedside. Doctors come and go, fidgeting and tentative under his stare. Alone in the room with him, they last only as long as it takes to complete their procedures. A few attempt to remove him. One goes so far as to fill out a requisition, but the scribe—Yun—intercedes. For the most part, afterwards, they leave him alone.

And Charon waits.

On the fifteenth day of V's coma, she wakes and wakes fighting, teeth bared, groping for her gun. Finding herself unarmed, she tears the metal bar from the side of her bed, wrenches it free with a gun-shot crack.

Charon dodges a vicious blow at his head, pins her arms as best he can to keep her from tearing out her tubes, repeating her name like a mantra. At last, she recognizes him.

V drops the metal bar and reaches for him instead, holds his face between her hands, whispering, "You're here. You're _here_."

He hears in her voice the echo of his own hurts, the fortnight after she died.

Were they both dead, he wonders? Had she crossed the river, after all, looking for him?

Charon swallows, takes her hands in his and cannot—cannot _fathom_ —but V looks up at him, her eyes wide and shining, says, "Can I ask you to stay with me? Here? I don't—Charon, I'm afraid I'll wake up again and you'll be gone."

And he will do _anything_ she asks.

Carefully, mindful of her machines, Charon climbs in behind her to keep from tangling the wires. V curls into him, tucks her head beneath his chin, and the tension flows from her like a broken dam.

Not long after, she falls asleep again. Charon shifts his shotgun closer to his side.

He will not lose her again.

* * *

Little changes. V spends the next two days in unbroken sleep, though occasionally, Charon feels nightmares crawling beneath her skin. She settles when he speaks to her, when he flattens a hand against the bare skin of her arm. Sometimes, her lips move. He thinks it is his name.

Though occasionally he paces, Charon never strays far.

V needs him. She told him so, and he will not—he will not _fail_ her again. And so while doctors come and go, irritated he did not summon them when she woke, Charon does not leave her side.

She needs him.

* * *

Eighteen days in, hours before sunrise, V wakes. Gingerly, she shifts, pulls her legs over his so her cheek presses against his chest.

"You're not sleeping," she murmurs, muffled against his body.

"No," Charon tells her. "I am not."

Thankfully, she does not order him otherwise. Her finger traces a pattern on his forearm, following a broken seam of missing skin. For some time, Charon sits in silence, watching her. He suspects she is writing his name into his missing flesh. And he does not—does not understand her fascination, her perseverance. But he wants to.

Carefully, Charon ventures, "Why did you purchase my contract? Knowing what you did, why risk it?"

V shrugs. She tips her face to him, offers him a smile.

"You needed me to," she says, her fingers curling around his. "You needed somebody. So did I. I thought we'd be okay. Thought we'd make it out together."

 _"She saved you too, huh?"_ Gob had asked him, a lifetime ago in Megaton. Until this moment, Charon did not realize how right he was.

V saved him. Changed him. She took a monster and made something else entirely. Something useful, something with value, with _purpose_ , and asked for _nothing_ in return.

Charon feels his name burning beneath V's hand. Swallowing, he tugs her closer to him, shifts his shotgun nearer as V returns to sleep.

He shuts his eyes, teeth clenched.

He will _not_ fail her again.

* * *

Still, doctors filter in. Still, they test and prod and ferry samples back to their lab. And still, V sleeps.

They are giving her something, he thinks. She has nightmares now he cannot stir her from. A war rages behind her eyes. She calls for him, sometimes. When he answers, she does not hear.

So Charon stops letting the doctors in. He turns them away—sometimes with a lowered shotgun when they will not go for words. A scant few, though, he still trusts. He lets these come and go, when she needs something, but allows no more tests, no more knives and slides and needles.

This upsets things.

Three doctors arrive, equipment ready, demanding he step aside. They _order_ him. But after Charon picks up the first and throws him from the room, the other two are quick to depart. They try again, twice more, to the same results.

Afterwards, when they want something, they send Scribe Yun in first.

* * *

Still, V sleeps. Still, nightmares wrack her frame. Three days of this and Charon stops letting any doctor in. Though, Yun—Yun, he trusts—and so she brings the little things V still needs. Fluids, changes to the machinery. She has training, apparently. Training enough, at least.

Today, she eases a needle into V's arm—intravenous nutrients, she told him yesterday, very necessary—and says, "This can't continue much longer."

Charon says nothing.

"I understand your contract stipulates you must protect your employer from harm, but through inaction, you are potentially causing harm."

At this, he shrugs, watching V's face for signs of pain. "Many of these tests are unnecessary."

Yun frowns at him. "Preventive is not _unnecessary_."

She is good at needles. V's face does not change. Still, Charon prefers when she turns her attention to other machines. Yun moves through the room with care. He finds her pattern comforting.

Until Yun she pauses, upsetting the routine to regard him with lips pursed. She says nothing. Under her stare, Charon shrugs again.

"Preventative measures have been completed. My mistress has woken—she will regain her health and is no longer a concern. Lyons has _not_ woken. These tests—they are not to my mistress' benefit. They are for Lyons'. Nothing in my contract stipulates that I must protect Lyons."

Yun shakes her head. She resumes her routine, but things have changed. Charon feels the ground shift subtly beneath his feet.

"This is not about Lyons," she says. "We do not yet fully understand the effect radiation had on V's body. We need to check for mutations, malignant growths, necrotic tissue."

They may well find such things, Charon knows. He has seen others—has carried others suffering similar into Barrow's shop—but even Barrows could do nothing. For all their technology, the Brotherhood does not careenough to understand radiation. They have not had cause to learn. Barrows has had lifetimes, a history's worth of cause. If he cannot fix this, they surely cannot.

Charon says nothing, puts his back to a corner and watches the door.

"Were V awake, she would want to know," Yun presses, working a careful cloth over V's burns.

"But she is not awake," Charon tells her, "And it is my duty to protect her."

"Some damage can be reversed. Caught early enough, it _is_ possible to revert the ghoulification process."

If she were anyone else, he would have thrown her from the room. But as little as he knows of her, Charon trusts this woman. She waded into a war older than her grandparents, wielding only a battered, forgotten language. For V. To help V.

So Charon says nothing. He watches V, matches his breathing to hers.

Yun watches him, gauging.

"You would prefer her to lose her mind, then?" she says, like testing water. "Given the amount of radiation she sustained, it is not impossible for her to wake feral. Sometimes the mind goes before the body."

The start of another nightmare, V's breathing hitches. Charon's follows suit. He feels ice closing around his fingers, feels the Ninth Circle like a tomb and V snarling, furious, hissing, _"You fucking coward! You left me there to die."_

"There are worse possibilities, if you like," Yun says.

Worse possibilities? Worse than the boiling emptiness, worse than V's body limp and quiet in his arm? Worse than _failure?_ Worse than running, hearing her fall, _letting her die_ , again and again—

"For instance, say because we cannot run the necessary tests, V's organs begin to liquefy—"

 _"Nyet!"_ Charon snarls without meaning to, doesn't realize which language he has spoken until quietly, the scribe rises and retreats, slipping from the room.

Standing at the wall, his breathing harsh, Charon watches the door. He counts a minute in his head. Then ten more. She does not return.

He worries them, speaking Russian. Enough that they will leave. He files the information away for later use.

Gingerly, Charon returns to his place at V's side. He feels strange, hollow and too-full. Memories hover at the edges of his consciousness, long forgotten battles of no further consequence. He watches them pass, thinking of V in the library, clutching an old book, fragments of his history.

Curling his fingers in hers, Charon finds himself wondering what she would think.

And he waits.

* * *

He wakes in the night, not knowing what woke him, not realizing he had slipped into a doze at all. He finds V watching him.

Her hand settles on his knee, just close enough for her to reach. Without a word, Charon rises, slips in behind her. Her body fits against his like a piece slotting home.

"I worry," V whispers.

"Don't," Charon tells her. "I will protect you."

But V only shakes her head. "That's why I worry."

And Charon is not a man for words. He does not know how to comfort her. Has never known how to fix what cannot be mended with metal or threatened with lead. He wants to, though. He wants to be of use, to serve her in whatever way she requires—wants to provide _comfort_ —with a vehemence that surprises him, burning like a fist around his lungs.

He has not been trained for this. He hopes, given time, he will learn.

* * *

The scribe returns alone the next morning, slips quietly inside and eases the door shut behind her. Despite her earlier retreat, she does not look frightened now. Looking at him, she heaves a deep breath. Something in her eyes looks like regret.

"The doctors need to run another deep-tissue radiation flush," she says. "While they're running the tests, they'll take a few biopsies—small samples, I promise you they will not hurt her—"

" _Nyet_ ," he growls, standing. " _Ukhodi_."

But this time, Yun only shakes her head. "No. Without these tests, V runs the risk of relapse. And considering your coherency, I do not believe you are currently experiencing intrusive recall. Stop this, Charon."

Hands clenched at his side, Charon shakes his head. "I will not. No more tests."

And Yun looks so sorry, fierce but cowed. She is angry, Charon thinks, though not at him and hiding it well. There is something she isn't telling him—some quiet sniper waiting in a distant wreckage.

"I understand you are anxious and I am aware of V's dislike for the Brotherhood," she says. "But while these tests may not show a measurable result _today,_ it is extremely likely they will improve her health in the future."

He shrugs, looks to V. "Then you will ask _her_."

"She is sleeping. Better that she sleeps as long as possible. Awake, she is in quite a lot of pain."

"And I will not add to it. You will ask her."

Yun sighs, running fingers through her short hair. "I understand," she says. "And it's an argument I've made many times on your behalf. Unfortunately, my superiors do not agree."

There—a quiet, sunlit scope in the distance.

"It does not concern them," he says.

"They believe it does." Yun looks at him, mouth thin, heavy with regret. "You make them nervous, Charon, and they are losing patience. Lyons wants me to take your contract. Failing that, he is planning on sending in a team."

Charon goes cold. Brahms stutters in coils around his shoulders. His fingers burn. He smells sulfur, cordite. His mouth fills with smoke. V whispers, _"I need you,"_ and spits, " _You left me there to die."_

"An attempt on my contract constitutes aggression against my employer," Charon tells her, shaking, a quiet broken rage. "I will put them down or die trying."

Yun says, "I know," and her voice is an apology. "I have told them as much. But then, we both know how well they listen." After a moment, she adds, "It would be easier to cooperate."

Charon checks the rounds in his shotgun magazine and says nothing.

* * *

He expects an attack. He does not expect a scent.

Somewhere past noon, Charon smells melting ice and warm cotton. He rises.

He finds the Head standing at V's feet. The man holds his gloves in his left hand, his hair slick, his uniform standard issue green. Important details, Charon thinks, but cannot remember why.

It does not matter. Face grim, the Head barks a series of numbers.

And Charon blacks out.

* * *

He wakes standing, gun in his hands, facing the door. His head throbs. He feels his heartbeat in his teeth, in his fingers. His whole body aches.

"I'm okay," V says behind him, soothing, placating. "I'm okay. They're gone. It's over. Charon— _Kharon_ —stand down. Please."

Slowly, Charon lowers his gun, staring at the barricade of tables and cabinets pressed against the door. His work, he sees, but does not remember lifting them into place.

He thinks of the radiation outside Vault 87, of the radiation in the purifying chamber.

Thinks, _prolonged isolation._

"Charon?" V whispers.

Keeping well away from her, he turns, holsters his weapon. Better not to have it in hand.

"Oh thank god," she breathes, already reaching for him, as if he didn't—as if he isn't—

But V reads his face, names his fear, and shakes her head. "Fucking assholes tried to sedate you. It triggered some kind of failsafe in your programming. They panicked. Tried to antidote it—woke me up, but couldn't fix you." Her hand falls, restless and empty on the bed. "You were speaking Russian. You didn't recognize me."

Not feral, then. Charon breathes, but the knowledge brings no relief.

"No, I would not," he says. Carefully, he creeps closer, gauging her face, her body. "Did I hurt you?"

V shakes her head, eyes fierce. "No! Of course not. You wouldn't," she says it like promise, though she cannot be sure. She has known him all of ten months. She has no concept of his history, his _programming,_ but she looks at him and Charon knows that she believesin him. She _trusts_ him. As far as she is concerned, he will never hurt her.

V has slept with monsters and she is not afraid.

She says, "I used your name. The one on your contract. You responded enough. Stopped attacking them, at least. Barricaded the room."

This time, when she reaches for him, Charon goes. He holds her close to him for a long time, full of shattered glass, shaking in his bones. He could have hurt her. She is _everything—_ she is his _War—_ and if they'd broken him, if he'd broken _her—_

"You wouldn't have," V whispers, turns and curls, bringing her legs up over his. "You wouldn't have hurt me."

Charon tucks her head beneath his chin, holds her and cannot look at her. She… She is so fragile now, so many wires and tubes and medicines. He could have hurt her and not realized, not known until he came to and found her shattered at his hand and the idea, the _knowledge_ —

Had his failsafe functioned properly, he should have killed her.

"You wouldn't have," V promises him, insistent. He feels her fingers curling around his bicep.

"I wouldn't have," he repeats, but in his mouth the word are not promise, only prayer, a worry stone to see him through the night. "I wouldn't have."


	25. Chapter Twenty-FIve

(A/N: Just three more chapters left after this!)

* * *

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 25

* * *

V remains awake. She rails from her doorway at anyone who will listen. Leaning against the frame, she accosts doctors and paladins, stares down the knights that come when the others grow afraid.

"Because I could not say _no_ , you heard _yes_!" she snarls at doctors. "Just like the fucking Enclave. Anything _for the better good_ —and who gets to decide what's _good?_ Not me, right? No, I'm just a kid. A fucking _princess._ What do I know?"

Some try to reason with her, to argue her health, the necessity of her care. One, earnest and too old for such delusions, tells her that her test results will help others. V hears _it will help Lyons,_ and though she can barely stand, she is still strong. She grabs the man by the front of his robes, hauls him forward until they are nose to nose.

"I would like to stick my fist down your throat," she says, sweetly. "It will help me to feel better. Better, it will help my friend here feel better. So I should go ahead, right? Because it will _help_?"

"I understand you are _upset_ ," he stutters. "But violence will not solve anything."

Charon thinks it must have been easier to agree when she was only a rumor, a name on a requisition form.

V bares her teeth, so very close to the man's trembling chin.

"If violence solves nothing," she whispers, "then why did you attack my friend?"

For this, no one has an answer.

And when V lets the man go, when she returns to her bed, the knights clear the hall of people. Afterwards, anyone who passes through travels with an escort. Most people steer clear. The hall remains empty for hours at a time.

V sits on the bed, her side pressed to his, watching the door.

"They have to walk outside to walk around," she says and smiles.

They both take grim satisfaction in that.

* * *

Of all the Brotherhood members, Yun persists. Even when nothing requires her attention, she comes. More and more, with V awake, they talk. Yun brings cards. V shares a little of her history, of _their_ history sprawled throughout wastes, over poker and gin and one breakneck game of war that leaves her laughing.

Until, four days in, Yun says, "You know, you might feel better if we spoke about it."

V tenses, cupping a pair of threes and sixes. "Spoke about what?"

Yun's face does not change, rearranging her cards. "About what happened to you. The brahmin in the room. It's often beneficial to talk about these things with a neutral party, privately—both of you—to separate your experiences."

Cleaning one of their spare guns, Charon stops. His fingers burn, a storm warning on the horizon. V flattens her cards against the table. "You're saying we're co-dependent."

Carefully, Yun sets hers aside, folds her hands. "If you feel better putting it that way, then yes."

"So?" V snaps. "What's the matter with that? He has my back; I've got his. That's how it works."

Yun nods. She looks at V, fixes her with her full attention.

"And in your case, such a bond has proved incredibly useful. The two of you have been through a great deal together and have formed a unique way of… coping with events. However, you must admit, V, it is not unreasonable to expect that you and I could have a conversation without Charon present."

Charon snaps the gun together, returns it to the bag half cleaned. He watches Yun, wondering if she holds her hands to look inoffensive or to stop them from shaking.

She _should_ be shaking. Across the table, V holds herself too still, unblinking. Slowly, she smiles. "Is that why you tried to sedate him, then?"

"You're defensive. I understand."

"No, you _don't._ You did to him what the Enclave did to me. For your _convenience_. Because he wasn't where you wanted him, _how_ you wanted him."

But even knowing what this woman can do—knowing what _Charon_ can do—Yun only purses her lips and says, "V, that is ridiculous and you know it. I had nothing to do with that truly idiotic decision. You are avoiding the issue because the question makes you uncomfortable. Very well. If you and I cannot converse alone, then perhaps Charon—"

In a second, V is on her feet.

 _"You stay the fuck away from Charon,"_ she snarls, swaying but dangerous.

Cautiously, Charon stands. He places himself at her side, where he can catch her or intervene as necessary.

But even faced with the woman who purged DC, Yun remains calm. She nods.

Gently, she says, "This is exactly the response that worries me, V. A separation of twenty feet should not cause this level of anxiety."

And at her quiet surety, it occurs to Charon for the first time that perhaps they _are_ strange, their responses inappropriate. His place is at his employer's side; his function is to protect her. But the idea of losing V fills him with an unfamiliar, churning dread.

Charon thinks of Azhrukhal, never more than five minutes alone together. He thinks of the others, thinks of years spent as unnoticed as the other weaponry. Before, he had not cared where his employers went or what happened to them. Some had died beside him; he had retrieved his contract and continued on.

But V's fingers slide through his, and Charon cannot—cannot _fathom_ a world without her in it. He begins and ends with her. She is his _War_.

He thinks, perhaps, the scribe is right.

But V shakes her head, vehement and furious. "You're Brotherhood," she spits, "And the Brotherhood _attacked him_."

Yun's eyebrows rise. "An attack?" she says. "Yes, let's talk about that. By my estimation, your friend here could not have slept more than twelve hours in twenty six days. He has prevented our medical staff from reaching you on fifteen separate occasions. Seven of those resulted in physical injuries—none of them his."

"They had no _right—"_

Mouth tight, Yun stands. " _I am not finished._ Charon became violent to such an extent we were unable to reach _you_ and provide necessary medical assistance without risking actual _casualties_ of our own. Out of difference to you and your sacrifice for DC, while he posed a red-level threat within our facility, we responded with minimal force— _sedating_ him—for our well-being, yes, but his and yours as well. It was not the best decision, but I assure you, it was not made without cause."

Calm and cold, V takes the cards from the table, returns them to the pack.

"Fuck you," she says, sliding the deck to Yun. "You do what you want because you want to. You're just clever enough to cover your tracks with a pretty reason. If that's what you're here for, don't come back."

Yun shakes her head, lips pursed, "I _want to_ because I am concerned for your recovery."

"You are nosy. It's fucking different."

"I am a scribe. Nosy is my job description," she says and shrugs, taking her deck. "It does not, however, stop me from being _right._ I'll leave the two of you alone for now. But please, think about it."

* * *

Though she wavers, V refuses to sit. Long after Yun leaves, she paces the room, her hands balled into fists, humming with nervous energy. She says nothing—attempts no questions or conversation—but her hands creep constantly to the edges of her burns.

Charon remembers the Jefferson Memorial, the hours before her father's death.

He waits.

At last, at the end of an hour, V drops to the edge of the bed. Carefully, Charon joins her.

They do not touch. V curls into herself, her arms around her knees, and Charon feels the loss of her heat like a physical ache. For some time, the silence survives.

Quietly, V whispers, "I was scared. I thought they had you."

Charon's stomach clenches. Immediately, he knows what she means.

"It will not happen again," he insists, jaw tight, but V shakes her head.

"I thought they had you. I found my gear. They'd taken my ammo, but left my suit, my fist, so when I hit them, I broke their necks. I opened every door. I killed _every_ soldier that crossed me. It took me awhile. More than a day, I think. Maybe two? They caught me twice but I—" she falters, holds her knees closer, picks at the burn on her hand. "I got uncaught."

Cold to his bones, Charon feels miles away, feels locked in the Ninth Circle, under constant battery.

 _"You left me there to die,"_ V accuses from his memory. _"After everything I did for you, you just hand me over to the Enclave? You run?_

But at his side, she says, "I was scared. I couldn't find you, Charon. You weren't—weren't _there_ and maybe you were dead. Maybe I'd gotten you killed. And everywhere I went, I left bodies stacked behind me and I—I was scared of myself, too." She swallows, staring at her hands. "They called me a monster in the vault and this is what they were afraid of. I am exactly what they always thought I was."

"No," he says and he _knows it_ —knows it in his blood—but V only clenches her teeth, looks up at him with wide, frightened eyes.

"Charon, I reached into a man's chest and pulled his lungs out. Easy. Like shredding paper."

Seeing her so shaken, the world shifts. Charon looks at his employer, his _partner_ , and he remembers seven months ago—six, five—when threats to her safety involved only idiots with nail boards and badly maintained guns. He wants to protect her and wishes, so badly, it were simple again.

At last, V whispers, "Do you think Yun is right? Are we… broken?"

"No," he says.

"No?" She looks at him with hope, with sadness and fear, and Charon is not a man for words. He does not know what to say to soothe her.

V fingers creep from her knees to find his. He runs a thumb over her knuckles, tracing old damage there.

 _We are not broken_ , he thinks, her hand dwarfed in his. _We are afraid_.

Instead, he tells her, "We will be alright."

Tremulously, she manages a smile. And it is worth it. It is enough.

* * *

Like a dog worrying at a carcass, Yun returns the next day. She enters the room determined but careful, one foot holding the doorway, and finds his eyes.

"I'd like a word with you, Charon," she says.

Without thinking, he falls back into an old pattern—fifteen years of habit—and says, "Talk to V."

The echo, _talk to Azhrukhal,_ snaps like a live wire.

V flinches as if he has struck her. Immediately, Charon regrets speaking at all. He looks at her, tries to catch her eyes, to find an order in the shape of her fingers, but V holds herself very still, eyes low.

Yun notices. She looks between them, gauging, says, "I didn't realize you were under orders. I apologize."

V's jaw clenches, shoulders tight. She keeps her head down, scratches at the burn along her scalp, and will not look at him. Charon tries—tries to find her eyes, takes a step closer, reaching for her—but V shakes her head.

"Charon isn't under orders," she says, so quietly. She glances at him, quick and sharp, but cannot meet his eyes. Slowly, she squeezes her knees to her chest. "You do what you want, Charon. You know that."

Looking at her, Charon sees her in the library, a fist around his name, trying to hold onto anything she can find. He sees her, believing she is alone.

She is _not alone._ She is his War. She is his _choice._

She is not Azhrukhal.

Yun says nothing, waiting, watching. She came to test boundaries and found a minefield instead. Now, she stands back, tallying the damage, and in that instant Charon despises her violently—but hates himself with the same vehemence.

"I have nothing to say to you," he grinds between clenched teeth. "If you wish to speak with my employer, you may do so, but _I_ have not been ordered to converse with you."

The last is for V. He hopes she understands. He is not… he is not built for the litany of small freedoms she gives him. He cannot—cannot simply _decide_ what he will and will not do—but he wants V to know he understands, appreciates what he cannot graciously accept.

Yun nods.

"Very well," she says. "If you ever change your mind, know that the offer always stands."

* * *

V sits like a stone for hours after. She says nothing, will not meet his eyes—does not reach for him or ask him to join her—and Charon's whole body hurts.

He… he _wants._ And the shock of wanting anything is still so jarring, but he wants… he wants to keep her from pain, to keep her safe, to never have failed her. He wants her to be whole and uninjured again. He wants her to smile.

Still, V sits on the bed with her back to the wall, her knees to her chest, and Charon does not know what to do. He does not. But he thinks… he thinks he will try.

Slowly, he joins her on the bed, sits beside her though he is careful not to touch.

"I have… offended you?" he ventures. "It was not my intent."

V shrugs. "Can I give you a standing order?"

Charon feels better at the prospect of an order—a clearly defined goal, a need—and is disgusted with himself for it. Still, he says, "You are my employer. If you order me, I will obey."

"I can't—I don't _own_ you," V says, jaw set. "Do what you want, Charon. Whatever you want. _Leave_ if you want. You don't have to listen to me. Consider it a standing order."

And his contract does not work like that—he _cannot_ do what she has asked—but nevertheless, Charon's blood runs cold. He feels an abyss gaping under him, waiting to swallow. Feels an ocean closing overhead.

"You wish for me to leave?"

V looks up. He sees a wolf, cornered.

"Do you want to leave?" she challenges.

The question strikes him as bizarre. Does he want to leave? _Can_ he? Is he capable of _wanting_ to leave an employer? He hated Azhrukhal, despised the man, watched the bar at night musing on the day his leash would slip and he could finally kill him. But had he _wanted_ to leave? He had wanted to shoot him. Beyond that… nothing.

Yet, the question—does he want to leave _V?_ —fills him with blind, unruly panic.

He had never considered what would come after Azhrukhal. Had never _cared_. But he has been without V. He has been bereft of employer and contract—has _failed her_ —and the emptiness hurt worse than any hundred bullets taken in her name.

Charon was built, designed, to _obey,_ to have no desires of his own. His purpose is to serve his employer until the day he can no longer do so. There are no provisions in his contract for want.

But V looks at him, angry and hurt, and Charon wants. More than anything, Charon wants.

"I do not wish to leave," he says. But it is not enough and Charon gropes for what words he can to comfort her. "Given the… choice, I would remain with you indefinitely. You have such honor that, in service of you, _I_ have honor. I have not… I was designed for war. But you…" he looks at his hands, scarred and calloused, battle-worn and long burnt.

"Mistress, you are my War," he tells her. "Wherever you lead, I will follow."

V looks at him as though she does not recognize him, as though he has given her more than she ever hoped for. The anger in her eyes has changed, curled into something quieter, something small and hurt and hopeful.

When she speaks, he hears her voice catch. "I could give you your contract."

"You did," Charon says. "I returned it."


	26. Chapter Twenty-Six

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 26

* * *

Not long after, they leave.

"I hate it here," V tells him, curled into his chest one night. "Let's go back to Rivet City."

It is not an order. Rather, a question. He thinks, if he disagreed, she would stay.

Because he asked her to.

Though she is weak, though he worries about her on the road, Charon says, "Tomorrow."

"Three-dog first, though," she ventures. "I want to send a message."

Charon shrugs. "As you wish."

It doesn't matter where she walks; he will follow her.

And so they go.

* * *

Outside the Citadel, water caravans rumble through. Though many wear the Canterbury Commons insignia, he does not recognize the drivers. Walking along a loaded Brahman, V stops a woman to ask, "What's the safest route through DC?"

The woman laughs. "You're on it," she says. "This is V's Road. Just follow the shells and you'll be fine."

V falters. She stops. Immediately, Charon finds her side.

"V's Road?" she breathes.

And it is. It is their road—their path through the city—their spent shells and others' cobbled into the dirt by the passing of many feet. They walk, retracing their old path.

When they reach the closer city streets, they find signs, _V's Road_ written on buildings, on scraps of metal, over and over. For those who passed through and could not read, someone marked the path with pictures: two empty shotgun shells on angle—a V to mark the way.

V stops. Halfway to Chevy Chase, in the thick of what had been a battle-zone not two months before, V stares—at the signs, at her name, at the safest road in DC—and begins to cry.

Charon does not know what to do. Still, he tries. He places a careful hand against her elbow, the way he has learned to tug her from her nightmares.

"We did good," he tells her and through her tears, V smiles.

"Yeah," she says and swallows, passes a hand over her eyes. "I guess we did."

* * *

Despite the Brotherhood presence at GNR, Three-dog had not expected them. When V turns the corner into his studio, the man bolts to his feet, nearly upending a table. A grin splits his face. Vibrating like an overeager child, he seizes V's hand, then Charon's.

"Well, if it isn't War and Death. Always a pleasure to entertain heroes," he says, bouncing from foot to foot. "Although if I know you two, you're not here on a social call. What can ol' Three-dog help you with?"

V shifts, scratches at a burn until Charon steals her hand. Her elbow knocks his—a gentle rebuke—but she does not return to picking at the scab.

She asks, "I was wondering if I could say something on the radio?"

For a moment, Three-dog does not react. He takes a step back, head cocked, looking between the two of them. But V's face does not change and Three-dog breathes, "You ain't joking," like a revelation.

"No, I'm not joking." V's hand lifts and stops, returns to her side. She shrugs instead. "It's not much—just a little love letter to the wastes."

Delighted, Three-dog laughs. "Love letter to the wastes. That's fantastic. Goddamn, girl. You better give me more of these or you'll break my heart." And then, "Come on. I'll show you my rig."

Like a proud father, he takes V into the next room, pointing out his equipment and explaining each until, at last, he sits her down in front of an old microphone.

"You're not live," he says. "I want this to be perfect, so we're gonna record it until it's right, okay?"

V pulls a scrap of a Citadel poster from her pocket, words scrawled across the back. "Jesus, Three-Dog. Don't get your hopes up."

Unabashed, Three-dog shrugs. "After all the stunts you pulled? My hopes are _sky_ high," he says and grinning, flips the red switch.

"Dear Wasteland," she reads. "Didn't want you to worry. Purifier hurt like a bitch, but I'm not dead. Wanted to let you guys know. Megaton, give me a month, maybe two. I'll be on my way back. And Big Town, you're next. Top priority, I promise. With love, from V."

Three-dog slaps the machine off, pretending to swoon. "Perfection! As if I expected anything less. You have _got_ to get me more of these. Please, tell me I can expect you on my show."

Smiling, V stands. "I'll think about it."

* * *

Once in Rivet City, they take a room at the Weatherly. News of their arrival spreads quickly. No sooner does V drop her duster over the back of a chair then footsteps echo down the hallway towards their room.

Lips pursed, armor stripped to the waist, Charon picks up his shotgun. He means to glower out the doorway—warn off their welcoming party—but before he reaches the door, he hears Butch outside.

"No, bug off! The shit she's been through, you think she wants to talk about your problems? Like hell. Go away. And you, too. Get out of here. Go home."

Kicking off her boots, V smiles. "He's getting faster," she says.

Shrugging, Charon lets him in.

The boy looks different. Older. Though he retains the ridiculous leather jacket, he no longer wears the jumpsuit, his clothing worn and practical.

Without an invitation, Butch strides into the room. He drops the package he carries on the table, hugs V so hard he nearly lifts her from her feet.

"Big damn heroes," he mutters into the newly grown fuzz of her hair. "Had me fucking worried. Exploding shit. Saving shit. God _damn_ , V."

V grins into his shoulder. "Charon helped."

"Charon is a goddamn instigator." Letting her go, Butch turns, giving Charon the eye. "I mean, come on, man. You're not even _trying_ to keep her out of trouble."

Charon thinks of their prior meeting, Butch laughing, _"You're done for. You're in too deep."_ Thinks of the last night at the Citadel, his willingness to do anything V asked.

Still, even now, the boy is not wrong.

"V istrouble," Charon says. "It is pointless to try."

V laughs—after all that has happened, she _laughs—_ and Charon feels the knot of tension in his shoulders ease.

They will be alright, he thinks. They are healing already.

* * *

The package Butch brings turns out to be a dress.

"Look, don't get any ideas," he says as she lifts it from its paper wrapping, reverent and gentle. "It's just, you always said you wanted a dress back in the vault. This looked like it'd fit Grognak, so I figured it'd fit you."

For a long time, V does not speak. She holds the dress to her body, running her hands over the fabric again and again, and though Charon sits at the table sorting their packs, he cannot help but watch her from the corner of his eye.

At last, she manages, "Butch, you are a goddamned sweetheart."

The kid shrugs, shifts his weight, "Aw, shaddup," he says. "Figured you could use something pretty. Now sit down and let me at least _try_ to salvage the mess you made on your head."

* * *

When Butch leaves, V pauses only to sweet up the fallen hair before she strips down, steps into her dress.

"Zip me up," she says to him, smiling, offers him her back.

It is not an order Charon has ever been given before. He lifts the tiny zipper into place, knuckles grazing the skin of her spine, feeling huge and clumsy. When he steps away, Charon does not know what to do with his hands.

If V notices, she does not say. She looks at herself in the dusty face of a mirror, takes two of the big leather belts she uses to strap extra gear to her pack and cinches them around her waist. Though the dress went gray long ago, it glows against her dark skin. Barefoot, she spins. The fabric floats around her.

V grins. Her eyes find his. "How do I look?"

It takes Charon a beat too long to realize she asked him a question. By the time he does, the words have evaporated, senseless and forgotten in the air between them. Stepping into her boots, V laughs.

"Let's go get a beer," she says, hooking her arm through his. "Maybe some food."

Charon swallows twice before he can agree.

* * *

They head first to Gary's Galley, but do not make it there. A woman intercepts them at the Marketplace door, small and cringing, whispering for help.

"I used to be a slave," she says. "And now there's a slaver on this ship. Sister. I think he's after me."

V's face goes cold and Charon sees in her eyes the woman who stormed a super mutant encampment because no one else would, the woman who cleaned DC because it needed done, the woman who died twice to clean water for people she would never meet.

"Can you shoot?" she asks.

"I… yeah, I can shoot," the woman says. "But I don't have a gun. And I can't—he can't _see_ me. I don't have any caps."

Carefully, V smiles, though her eyes are dark. "We're gonna go pick you out a gun," she says. And then, "Charon, I think I need you to wait in the room."

Charon knows the shape of this order. Still, he tries, "My place is at your side."

V nods. "I know," she says. "But I think the fucker will run if he sees us both."

* * *

Twenty minutes later, V returns, quietly frog-marching a large, scarred man into the room. Despite his size and V's illness, she propels him easily. Were he not pale and struggling, his arm wrenched unnaturally behind his back, they might almost look a couple.

"You are making a huge fucking mistake," he spits as V kicks the door shut. "Who the fuck do you think—"

Seeing Charon, the words die in his mouth. Over Sister's shoulder, V smiles. In her eyes, he sees Raven Rock aflame, sees the fall of an army.

"Who the fuck do we look like?" she asks and shoves him into a chair. Quietly, she takes a length of cording from her nearby pack, forces his hands behind his back.

"Look, I've got no grief with you, okay?" he says as she binds his hands and secures them to the back of the chair, moves on to looping cord around his feet. "Whatever you heard—"

"I heard you're a piece-of-shit slaver," V says, standing, dusting off her hands. "Are you a piece-of-shit slaver, Sister?"

The man's eyes dart between them, sizing up two monsters. He struggles against his restraints, slow and quiet, as though they cannot see.

"What? I sell a friend of yours or something?" he sneers. "It's not personal; it's business. How the fuck do you expect me to eat?"

V smiles again. "Through a tube, when I'm done."

Though he is tied to a chair, though his life hangs in the balance, Sister has the audacity to laugh. "Some saint of the fucking wastes. Frozen, corpse-fucking bitch, like you're not sucking _him_ off every night for gun money."

Charon strides across the room and slams a fist into the slaver's gut, toppling the chair with the force of his blow. Only afterwards, does it occurs to him to look to V for orders, but V only smiles, mouths, " _My hero_ ," and rights the bastard's chair.

Then, she starts asking questions. V demands the layout of Paradise Falls, how many entrances, how many exits. When he does not comply, she breaks a finger. Then another, for the fun of it.

Slowly, Sister answers.

How many guards, she wants to know? How many guns? How many slaves and their location?

He lies. But then, they knew he would. Charon knocks out three teeth. V blacks an eye, bloodies a cheek.

"Leave his legs," V says. "He'll need those."

Charon nods and breaks a finger of his own. It is not the first time he has found himself in this position, only the first he has not regretted it.

Wheezing and bloodied, Sister gives V everything she asks for and volunteers more. Eulogy's house has a balcony, easily reached with a boost from below. The balcony leads to a second, inside, overlooking the ground floor. Eulogy's bed sits in the center of the room.

"You should know," he coughs. "You'll be seeing a lot of it, face down and—"

Calmly, Charon breaks his nose.

At last, V has everything she needs to know. She walks away, picks up a spare cloth to wipe the blood from her hands. None of it hers, Charon sees. He washes his hands in the sink, takes a stimpak for his scrapes, the wounds the walls of the Ninth Circle left him broken open, bleeding freely.

Sister spits, coughs, spits again.

"Fucking cunt. Think you're so goddamn tough. I know what you're afraid of," he says and laughs, staring at her from bloodshot eyes. "People like _me_."

V only smiles, real sweet. "You're absolutely right," she says and picking up Charon's shotgun, carefully knocks him out.

* * *

Untying his limbs, V hoists the man over her shoulder, easy as lifting the wreckage of a motorcycle.

"Mistress," Charon starts, but V shakes her head.

"I'm fine. I can handle one idiot. Anyway, I need you to walk ahead and clear the halls, head to the Marketplace."

He does not like it, but V does not waver nearly as much now when she walks, and so Charon obeys.

This late, few people are up and about. Those that remain take one look at the thunder in his face and find somewhere else to be. Many of those that remain are too drunk to notice or violently high. The sight of a woman in a once-white dress carrying a grown man over her shoulder will slide from notice, too strange to acknowledge.

They reach the Marketplace unhindered, avoiding the guards' patrols. Charon picks the lock, watches the door as V drops the slaver in the middle of the stalls, a mess of broken bones. Hazy and bloodied, he wakes a little, spitting curses, feeble insults.

V only smiles, pats his cheek.

"Do me a favor," she says. "Tell them I'm coming."

* * *

In the room again, V kicks off her boots and slips out of her dress. She scrubs the blood from the floor, takes Abaraxo to the stains Sister left her with. Charon strips—too hot from exertion, from the pent up sun-heat of the boat—and sits down, undershirt in his hands, watching her from the corner of the bed.

At last, V leaves her dress to soak and crosses to sit beside him.

Almost shy, she asks, "How do you feel about raiding Paradise Falls?"

Charon shrugs. It does not matter to him. Whatever battle she chooses, he will bear.

"Where you go, I follow," he tells her.

Frowning, V says his name—a gentle accusation. She means to say more, but when he turns, she reads his face. She understands.

"Okay then," she whispers. "Okay."

They sit for some time, together and silent, too wound to sleep and too tired to care. Charon feels V's fingers drift along his spine and closes his eyes, leans into the feel of her hand.

"Can I ask you what this says?" she ventures, quiet like a riverbank.

" _Cheloveku volk,_ " he tells her. "A wolf to man."

He feels V smile. Her hand flattens, then dances down his back. He thinks she is stroking what remains of the wolf, scratching behind its scabby ears. "That's beautiful."

"No," he says. "It is my designation."

And he smells smoke threatening on the corners of his consciousness, but it fades under the gentle pressure of her fingers, searching out the outlines of the wolf beneath his seams.

Behind him, solemnly, V nods.

She says, "I think it's mine, too."


	27. Chapter Twenty-Seven

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 27

* * *

They spend a week in Rivet City. At Charon's insistence, V spends much of it curled up in bed. But she does not sleep nearly as often as she did before, and now, when she has nightmares, she is easy enough to wake.

Carefully, working it over and over like a thread between them, they make a plan. V sketches her ideas into the air, outlines paths in the bed sheets. When that falls short, she draws a map on the paper that wrapped her dress. Charon marks out problems, cautions, asides. He points out where they can hide, where they can mine, where they can turn Paradise Fall's bottleneck to their own use.

V outlines one of the old boarded-up buildings forming a part of the outer wall.

"Mostly just concrete," she says. "If push comes to shove, I can punch my way through."

Still, they need a team. And so, at the end of the week, with V whole and hale again, they go hunting.

* * *

Butch comes first.

Though he respects the boy for the way he holds himself with V, he is not nearly Charon's first choice. He says as much, but V is adamant. Together, they visit his stall in the Marketplace.

"What?" he asks, looking up from where he's shaving down one of the guards, "you fuck up your hair already? Jesus, V."

V smiles, all teeth, and Butch pauses, seeing something in her eyes. History crackles in the air between them.

"I'm starting a gang," she says. "Baddest gang in the wastes. Gonna take out Paradise Falls. You in?"

And Charon watches as Butch's face changes. He hardens. His shoulders drop. The tension flows from his limbs and his eyes go cool, calculating. Charon sees a hunter in him then, and understands V's choice.

"You know I am," he says, voice hard and even, a vicious pride clenched between his teeth. "When do we leave?"

* * *

Despite V's hatred of the place, the three of them travel next to the Citadel. V walks into the Elder's office as though she has been invited, announces, "I'm going to clear out Paradise Falls. Do you have anyone willing?"

The Elder purses his lips, shuffling papers on his desk. "We are very busy with our part in the reconstruction already," he begins, but behind him, a dark woman in heavy armor pulls away from her position at the wall.

"I am willing," she says.

"Paladin Cross?" Lyons frowns, but Cross only smiles, rests a hand on the old man's shoulder.

"Helping the people of the Wasteland is of the utmost to the Lyons Doctrine," she says, gently. "Destroying Paradise Falls will help many people—now and in the future. It is important not to overlook the details for the whole." And then, turning to V, "Would you have me join you?"

Despite himself, Charon trusts her. Glancing at V, he signs _safe_ and she nods. She grins.

"I like you," she says. "I would be honored."

* * *

They pass through Underworld next, for Quinn, though he refuses.

"Sorry, V," he says, smiling like an idiot, his eyes dancing between them. "It's a good cause, but we're getting more traffic through Underworld. I've got to stay."

Later, when they stop at Carol's to collect news for Gob, Quinn catches Charon's arm.

"Glad to see you made it out okay," he says. "Both of you."

Charon does not answer him. He does not have to.

V's fingers hooked in his are answer enough.

Though they do not collect Quinn, the trip is not a waste. When outside, Willow raises the alarm, they emerge ready to fight and find her speaking to Fawkes instead, the super mutant hunched awkwardly behind the wreckage of several cars.

"What do you mean V sent you?" she demands. "You're a super mutant."

"I do not share the disposition of my closer kin. She believed it most likely to find others of a similar mind in this place."

Willow shifts, changing her grip on the rifle in her hands. Before she can fire, V calls, "He's alright! Hello, Fawkes."

Slowly, Willow lowers her gun. "You know him?"

V smiles. "He's a friend," she says and Willow puts her gun away.

"Good enough for me."

* * *

They spend the night in the Underworld's outer chamber, the five of them crowded around a fire.

"I do not like to travel in numbers," Fawkes says, "but yours is a worthy battle. I will assist you in any way I am able."

Butch raids their packs. Between what he finds and Carol's inside, he cooks enough to feed the group, and with extra for those ghouls who filter out to hear Fawkes talk.

The super mutant regales his audience with stories of his travels. Charon cleans his guns and V's, spreads _Never Again_ on the cloth in front of him as Cross eases down at V's unoccupied side.

"I fought beside you once before," she says. "As an infant. I took your father to Megaton, through the same Super Mutant nests you have since destroyed."

Quietly, she asks, "Did you know my mother?"

Cross smiles, nods. "I did," she says. "She was a fearsome warrior. You do her memory honor."

V's hand brushes his arm, there and gone again. Retuning the silencer to the towel, Charon reaches over, steals her hand, squeezes her fingers between his. Slowly, V smiles.

"Can you tell me about her?"

Cross spends the next two hours weaving quiet battles in the air between them, sharing an old friendship and childhood mischief.

Until, at last, she says, "It grows late. I will take watch tonight. I have been modified and do not require sleep."

And Charon has similar modifications. He does not need sleep either. But he spends the night lying at V's side, their backs pressed flush together, and finds himself grateful for the opportunity.

He sleeps, one arm cast behind him, V's hand curled in his. She dreams—wakes him near morning with a vicious kick to the shin—but she laughs in her sleep and he knows it is not a nightmare.

She is dancing, he thinks, and for this, too, Charon is grateful.

* * *

Next, they stop at Chevy Chase. Seeing her team, Three-dog cannot contain his excitement.

"What's this, V? What are you up to?" he asks, hopping from foot to foot. "Tell me I can put it on the radio."

"Yeah, V," Butch says, slinging an arm over her shoulders. "Bad enough you caught me up in all this good karma stuff. Put me on the radio."

"You sure got the face for radio," V sniggers, darting away to hide behind Charon's shoulder.

Butch starts to follow, thinks better of it a moment later. "Can I swat her one?" he asks.

"No," Charon says.

Butch shrugs. "Eh, worth a try."

* * *

Somehow V ends up on the roof of Three-dog's studio.

"I have something in mind," she tells him. "Maybe. I need to see your computer. Set a few things up."

Of course Three-dog agrees. And of course, setting a few things up involves running wires through the receiving tower. Charon doesn't like it, but he follows. Brotherhood of Steel likes it somewhat less. They glower and pace, watching her from down below.

At last, they slide down onto the balcony and return inside. V heads immediately to Three-dog's terminal, punches in codes while the man stands behind her, heedless of Charon's expression, grinning and bouncing.

"I don't know what you're up to, but I like it," he says. "I _like_ it."

An hour later, with the last of her cording and coding finished, V says, "I can record clips on my Pipboy and send them to you now. Should work anywhere in the waste."

Gleeful, Three-dog lifts V from her chair, spinning her in an impromptu waltz. "You're bringing the good fight straight to GNR, signed and delivered," he laughs. "You are my _favorite_ courier, V."

She leaves him with a drinking song, a messy recording from Gob's, her singing, everyone joining in.

"For special occasions," she says.

Three-dog accepts it like a gift, listens to it play, looking at V in quiet surprise. "You looking to give me something to celebrate?"

V grins, slow and sweet. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I am."

* * *

Last, they go to Megaton. People gasp and point at the sight of Fawkes—at the group of them, heavily armed—but no one draws a weapon. Even the children stare in wide-eyed wonder, watching them pass.

" _Wow_ ," the Simms boy whispers, creeping up to her side. "V, you caught a monster."

V smiles, shakes her head. "These aren't monsters. They're my friends," she says and then, reaching into her coat pocket, draws out the boy's picture. "See? I kept it."

Charon knows the look on the boy's face—recognizes his deep, blind-sided wonder.

Often, he finds himself awake in the early hours of the morning, V's face pressed into the crook of his neck, her hair tickling his jaw, and Charon does not know what road he took to bring him here. Watching her sleep, he tries to chart his course, combs his history looking for the place where suddenly _this_ makes sense, but he never finds it.

V is rare and impossible. He has never known anyone like her. A hundred-thousand little differences and he would never have known her at all. The thought strikes him, terrifying and odd. She is his War. He cannot imagine a road where he does not walk beside her.

Together, they crowd into Gob's. Even Fawkes finds a place, crouched near the back storage room. Gob looks at V as though either she has lost her mind, or he has.

"We thought you were dead for a while," he says, offering her a ragged smile. Charon sees the way his hands shake around the rag he uses to wipe down the bar. "Well, some people. I don't figure much can kill you."

"Garlic and silver," Butch says, lighting up a cigarette. "Oh wait, maybe that's werewolves."

And V laughs. "Jericho around?" she asks.

As it turns out, the old raider doesn't rise early. They spend much of the morning in the bar, Cross and V sharing stories with Gob, both ghouls fending Butch away from the liquor.

At last, past noon, Jericho swaggers in.

"Get your shit," V says. "We're heading out."

He snorts, peers up at the super mutant crouched in storage and doesn't bat an eye. "Like fuck we are. I don't travel with _Saints_ , kid."

"You do now. Want to know why?"

"Entertain me."

V smiles, elbows propped on the bar. "Because I am going to walk into Paradise Falls, I am going to shoot every sick fuck in the place, and I want you to be there."

Jericho chokes. Spitting smoke, he pulls the cigar from between his teeth. "Shit, kid. I'd say you were crazy, but I heard about DC. I don't—I'm a washed up old raider. This is…"

"You know the place," V presses. "You've been there before. You probably still know some people there."

"Well, yeah. Don't mean I can just…"

"For the last fifty years of your life, you sat back and did _fuck all_ for anyone else. You watched or you made it worse," V says, watching him, calm and even.

Jericho shifts under that stare, drops his cigar into a nearby ashtray. "So, what, this is my good deed? Gonna clean me up and send me to church?"

Behind the bar, Gob folds his arm—glares for the first time in Charon's memory—and stares the old raider through. "Jericho, you don't go with her, you never set foot back in my bar. Understand?"

"Who the fuck was talkin' to you?" he grumbles. "And I didn't say _no_. Look, kid, this is a suicide mission, you know that, right?"

V grins. "Blaze of glory," she says. "But I've survived one of those before."

Faced with her vicious sincerity, Jericho whistles. "Fucking hell. I don't know who's crazier: you for doing it, or me for actually fucking believing you. Fine," he says, "I'm in. But I'll need cash for supplies."

And easy as taming monsters, V completes her team.


	28. Chapter Twenty-Eight

And Wolves Beneath Their Seams

Part 28

* * *

Nobody goes alone. They split up in even numbers—V through the front with Jericho, Butch and Charon at the far border, Fawkes and Cross behind the slave pins.

Whatever Charon's concerns, Butch handles his string of grenades like a professional. He keeps his head low, his body in shadow, waiting for the signal.

They hear nothing for a long time—a good sign. The plan had Jericho distracting the gate guard long enough for V to stab him in the throat. A moment more passes without an alarm. And then, finally, over the sound of slavers laughing, Charon hears the gate grind open.

"Show time," Butch whispers. Sweet and clean, he tosses grenades over the edge of the wall. Charon follows suit, throws longer, bombarding the range.

Inside, slavers scream and swear. Gunfire erupts from the bottleneck. Distantly, Charon hears V laugh, hears Jericho swearing around the stub of a cigar.

"They're at the door!" someone bellows.

Another shouts, "Jotun, the _walls_!"

As Charon throws the last grenade, Fawkes sinks his fists into the wreckage that forms a wall around the slaves' quarters, ripping the signs and cars away as easily as carrying children. Cross sets a charge, blows the wall open like cracking an egg.

"To me!" she calls through the opening, climbing inside. "Allow me to deactivate your collars!"

Charon files in behind her, Butch and Fawkes at his back. They emerge in Paradise Falls to flames and bloodied smoke, slavers firing on their own in the confusion, bullets flying in every direction. Charon takes down three men before they can turn, easy as picking bottles. Poorly armored and unprepared for an organized assault, it is not nearly as difficult as cleaning DC.

Butch splits off, heading for the Pulowski Preservation shelter that marks the edge of his assignment. As he opens the door, Charon covers him. A man in a collar stumbles out, too-thin but grinning, bitter and joyful, demanding, "Give me a gun, any gun, just let me help!"

Without a thought, Butch gives the man the 10mm he keeps in his belt, shoves ammo into his hands. "Go to the pens!" he shouts over the fray. "Cross can get you out of that collar."

The man shakes his head, checks the clip. "Cross can get me out later," he says and lunges into the fray.

Service rifle tight to his shoulder, Butch backs up, guarding the door to the slave pen. Locked in step with Fawkes, Charon moves forward, picking off slavers as they emerge from the buildings. Their new addition runs fast and low, keeps to corners, fighting hard and vicious. He takes out slavers at the knees, finishes each he downs with a boot to the face.

Training, Charon thinks, recognizing the tactics of an old merc saving ammo.

He does not have time to dwell on it long. Soon, between them, the yard clears. V meets him, grinning. Her arms are bloody and for a moment Charon's breathing catches in his throat. It must show on his face, in his eyes, because V grins at him and says, "It's not mine."

"Shit, yeah, it's not," Jericho mutters, sucking viciously at his cigar. "Put her arm straight through a guy. I mean _fuck_."

"What, you wanted shot? I grabbed what I could," she laughs. "How about you take Fawkes and go bust down the gun show? Maybe visit the medic." And then, spotting their new addition, "Hey. New guy. You okay, buddy?"

The man grins, all teeth, jamming a second clip into his borrowed gun. "Fucking fantastic. Let me guess—V?"

Jericho rolls his eyes. "Goddamn saint. Fucking everybody's heard of you."

"Yeah, yeah, your shitty-ass reputation is ruined," V says. "Cry me a river."

"Guy came in a couple days ago," the new man says, "beat up real bad, crying about how the Saint of the Wastes would kill everybody here. Eulogy called him crazy. Shot him in the head to shut him up."

At Charon's side, V hums. She glances up at him with mischief in her eyes and looking at her, Charon sees the woman who carried him twice from Underworld, beautiful and vicious.

"Well," she says. "That worked out better than I hoped."

And she is monstrous—how could she be otherwise?—but soaked in blood, fighting for her, Charon is achingly, blindingly _proud_.

"Listen," the new guy says. "Eulogy's a monster with that .44. He's got two girls in there with him—don't waste time trying to save them. They're crazy about him and I mean fucking batshit psychotic. They'll kill you any way they can."

V nods. "Understood. Thanks for your help. Head back to the pens, Cross can get that thing off your neck."

Still, the man shakes his head. "Think I'll help your friends here if you don't mind. Got some scores to settle."

Shrugging, Jericho sends up a cloud of smoke, notches his gun to his shoulder again. "Your funeral," he grunts. "Come on."

V stands in the courtyard long enough to watch Fawkes put his boot through the armory door, shattering it into splinters as Jericho shoots and inside, someone screams.

Looking up at Charon, she grins. "I like today," she says. And then, tilting her chin at Eulogy's balcony, "Give me a boost."

With some effort, Charon hoists her up enough for V to reach the edge of the platform. Grabbing two posts for leverage, she scrambles up the rest of the way herself, stands, carbine ready, waiting at the door.

Charon takes his position.

Above, V calls a count of three.

He kicks down the front door; she kicks down the balcony. Together, they walk in shooting.

* * *

Afterwards, with the slavers cooling in the dust and the slaves newly unadorned, V lifts her Pipboy to her mouth, records, "Dear Wasteland, Paradise Falls is dead. Love, V."

She records a second message, next, explaining what they've done, listing their names, finishes with, "So here you go, Three-dog. Hope this counts as a special occasion."

And standing amongst the bodies, V finds Charon's hand—bloody though it is—and smiles.

* * *

The report goes live as they're on their way to Big Town, the ex-slaves walking in a tight huddle, surrounded by their team. They stop at the foot of the hill—Big Town's roofs just visible over the next rise—and listen.

Three-dog can barely speak. Voice tight, stuttered with joy, he says, " _As if safe passage through DC was not enough, as if pure water for the Wasteland was not enough, boy and girls, I just got another love letter from our very own Saint."_

And then V's message plays, rough with static but every word clear: " _Dear Wasteland, Paradise Falls is dead. Love, V."_

 _"You hear that, children?"_ Three-dog asks, playing the clip twice more for good measure. _"That's right, kiddies. The Wasteland cleaning team just overtook Paradise Falls. Ding! Dong! Eulogy Jones is dead. Him and his little slaver shitheads, too._

_"You can go ahead and thank your very own War and Death, Butch Deloria of Rivet City, Fawkes of Underworld, Jericho of Megaton, and Brotherhood Paladin Cross. If you see these guys in the wastes, buy them a drink. Hell, buy these heroes the whole damn bar. Tonight, the world is a better place than it was when we woke up."_

He plays the song without introduction, the sounds of the bar, Gob laughing, Nova laughing—and then V, " _Hold still, Charon, I need your shoulder_ "—climbing onto the bar and singing, everyone singing, the crowd of them messy, off-key and triumphant.

And Charon is proud—he is _so proud_ —to stand by her side, bloodied and aching, raw and flushed from their victory.

"Better get a free drink outta this," Jericho mutters and Butch laughs.

"We _all_ better get a free drink outta this," he says.

Normally stoic, Cross grins. "We have made history today, my friends."

The new man—Rory—snorts. "Yeah, well. I think this is probably a typical Tuesday for V. Anyway," he says, holding up a bag of caps. "Drinks are on Forty."

* * *

Most of the others crowd, laughing, into the Club House. Fawkes does not enter the town, preferring to spend the night in an abandoned house further up the road so as not to alarm the children. V returns to their house at the gate, fingers trailing Charon's boot print on the door—a habit already begun.

"If there is a god," she announces, trailing armor and clothing on her way to the bathroom, "the water will still work."

Apparently, there is a god. Or, at least, something close. With an almighty growling and explosive protests, the rusted pipes manage to spit a fair amount of water into the tub.

V grins up at him. "Flip you for it?" she asks.

Charon thinks of Rivet City, of shy eyes and V murmuring, " _You go first. I owe you one_."

"No," he says. But he know she will protest—knows she will argue and he will lose—and so, instead, before she can order him otherwise, Charon scoops her up and deposits his employer in the tub.

He walks out to V cursing her way through his family tree—returns just long enough to deposit her pack inside the door.

"Thank you, Charon," he hears as he eases the door shut. "You jerk."

She is a strange creature, his War.

Still.

* * *

When he emerges from the bathroom himself, half dressed and newly clean, he finds V watching him from the bed.

He stops. Something in her eyes. Charon swallows, loses track of his hands.

Slowly, V rises. She crosses the room like creeping up on yao-guai. Her fingers find his, trail his arms, meet again around his neck.

He cannot tear his gaze from her eyes, cannot move, afraid to break the moment, afraid he is wrong—

But V presses her lips to his and Charon cannot think. English flees him, Russian passes in a blur. Without meaning to, he spins, pins her against the wall. And he cannot _think_ —cannot stop—but V does not mind. She laughs into his mouth, pulls him down. They kiss and kiss again, her teeth nipping at his bottom lip, and Charon presses tight against her, cannot get close enough—could climb inside her skin and not be close enough—

"Can I ask you to fuck me?" V asks, low and warm, and Charon groans, shaking in his bones.

"Please," he chokes.

She shatters him. Smiling, laughing, she tugs him towards the bed. V holds him, his face in her hands, her mouth on his—searching, teasing—and Charon _burns_. He breaks into her, pressed as tightly against her as their bodies will allow. Her skin feels like a fire against him.

Together they manage to get rid of the layers separating them, and she is smooth where he is rough, but they are both scarred. V kisses an old bullet wound; he licks a knife scar. They catalogue each other's history, find the new wounds shared between them. They are by turns lazy and frantic. A particular twist of an old knife, a newly discovered freckle—and then V's breath hitches, his hips snap to hers, someone moans, someone bites—so much heat and need and want.

Eventually V laughs, breathless into his mouth, "God, we take a long time," and arches up, wraps her legs around him, reaches between them and pulls him home.

Charon finds a prayer in her name. She is too much—she is _everything_. She is inevitable, his saint, his War and Charon rocks into her—sweetly, gentle as he is able—but her legs are tight around his hips, her hands spanning his shoulders, demanding, urging, a plea in every bruising fingerprint.

"Fuck, Charon, _harder_ ," she manages and there is nothing she could order him that Charon would not do.

So he fucks her, hard and close, feeling her heartbeat through her skin, feeling _her_ , his mouth on her scars, on her name. Her nails rake bloody patterns down his back and physical violence violates his contract, but Charon feels deliciously violated—feels _free_ —and fucks her harder for it, biting, claiming, until she is gasping, each little hitch of air a fragment of his name. V spasms around him and Charon is lost, utterly lost. He spills into her, shatters, feeling V's hands on his back, putting his pieces back together, keeping him from shaking entirely apart.

She rebuilds him, shapes him. Charon pulls out and pulls her to him, tucks her head beneath his chin and holds her close. V laughs, her breath tickling the hollow of his throat. "We waited too long for that."

He presses a kiss to the top of her head. V laughs again, soft, nuzzles into him.

Charon holds her. A quarter-hour creeps by and he feels the tension leave her frame, feels her breathing slow as she falls asleep against him.

For some time, he lies awake, breathing the scent of her hair, her skin, feeling her heat, trailing his fingers down her spine. She is so much of him, he thinks, lying with her legs tangled in his, Charon is not sure where he begins and ends.

He finds he does not mind. And holding her against him, gently, he slips to sleep.

* * *

V wakes before sunrise. When he opens his eyes in the early morning, feeling sticky and sated and hopeful for more, he finds her watching him, smiling. Sunlight plays along the bridge of her nose, paints her lips in gold.

Charon reaches for her—because he can, because he _chooses to_ —and pulls her close. Presses a kiss to her sunlit mouth, to her jaw, to the curve of her neck.

They have sex again, sweet and lazy, curled close against the chill of the morning.

"I love you," V whispers against his skin. And then again, "I love you."

And though he is not built for it, though it has no bearing on the terms between them…

Charon is happy.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.


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